OLD HERBARIA. 277 



was an ' Index Plantarum omnium quas in sexdeeim voluminibus 

 diversis temporibus ex siccatus ar/i/Iutiiunit.' Cesalpini distinctly 

 alludes to two dried collections of plauts which must have been 

 formed by liim before 1574. The oldest existing collection of 

 which I am aware is that of Jean Girault, of Lyons, 1558. 

 Rauwolf brought home from the East over 500 dried plants col- 

 lected in the years 1573 to 1576. Rauwolf says of two plants found 

 near Tripoli that he had glued them with various other foreign 

 plants. They were preserved in the library at Leyden. Aldro- 

 vandi's collection existed in the early part of the seventeenth 

 century. Whether it is still preserved I am at present unable to 

 say. It was made, as was that of Cesalpini, between 1553 and 

 1563. Adrian Spiegel was probably the first author who described 

 the method of drying plants, which he did in his ' Isagoges in rem 

 herbariam,' 1606. He gives the name hortos hyemales to the 

 volumes of dried plants. 



" It has recently been my good fortune to meet with, at Oxford, 

 among some bundles of specimens, a very old collection of dried 

 plants. They had probably been at Oxford for some years, for the 

 bundle was labelled on the outside by the old curator, Mr. Baxter, 

 ' A collection of very old plants, chiefly British, with MS. descrip- 

 tions and synonyms. Looked over and cleaned, September, 1862.' 

 Under this Professor Daubeny had written, ' In the handwriting of 

 Dillenius, with long description of each plant attached.' 



" When the parcel was handed to me by the curator, I saw at 

 once that it was not Dillenius's handwriting, with which I was very 

 familiar. On taking it home I quickly saw that the plants were 

 not British. After a little study I came upon a label which gave 

 me a clue to their home, and subsequent research proved them to 

 have been collected by a Capuchin, Gregory of Reggio, in the 

 province of Bologna (not the more celebrated Reggio in Calabria), 

 in 1606. Many of these specimens are admirably preserved. They 

 were fastened on the paper by means of little strips of paper, not 

 glued, but with some resinous cement, of which olibanum was the 

 principal ingredient. To each plant was attached a paper label, 

 just as the majority of botanists fix them now, i. e., by cutting a 

 line through the top, and through this loop pushing the plant. 



" The labels in themselves are most interesting, as Gregory 

 gives the synonyms used for the plants by the early writers, 

 Mattioli, Lobelius, Cesalpini, Fucbs, Camerarius, Tragus, &c. 

 Also the habitats of the plant in a few cases precisely localised, its 

 therapeutic uses, and the date of flowering. Occasionally he gives 

 reasons for differing from preceding authors, or again gives a name 

 to what he considers to be a new species. Altogether, I suppose 

 this collection to be unique. It was bound in the leaves of an 

 Italian service book, and labelled at the back, ' Herbarum Divers- 

 [arum] Nat [uralium] Gregorii a Reggio.' This name probably 

 has precedence over any other as the title of a collection of plants. 



" A writer in the ' Gardeners' Chronicle' says that he knew of 

 the existence of the Hortus Siccus of Gregory of Reggio, but he 

 refers him to the Calabrian not the Bononian Reggio. It is to the 



