MORANDl's ' iriSTORICA BOTANICA PKACTICA ' 215 



The religious tone wliich pervades the dedication may perhaps be 

 considered as a concession to the dignitary to whom it is inscribed ; 

 there are, however, other evidences of the author's piety which read 

 somewhat strangely at the present day : it must indeed be long since 

 a work of this character concluded with an asci-iption such as the 

 following, which has a certain chai'm : 



" Tibi, rerum omnium Conditori, qui verbo tuo de terra medicinam 

 oriri fecisti, mihique servorum tuorum minimo mii-abilia tua ad totius 

 humani generis conimodum, sanctissimique tui nominis gloriam, in 

 publicum proferre dedisti, tibi honorum omnium datori laudem per- 

 solvant omnia opera manuum tuarum in aetenium, et ultra. Amen." 



The second edition, printed by Joseph Galeati at Mdan in 1761, 

 although described by Haller as " nihil mutata," differs in a few 

 unimportant particulars. It was reset throughout and occasionally 

 the distribution of the text was changed — e. g. the last sentence on 

 p. 19 of the first edition is in the second run over to p. 20, causing a 

 rearrangement of 20 lines : the " privilegium " by which in the first 

 edition all rights of sale etc. are secured to Morandi and his heirs for 

 ten years natui-ally disappears from the edition of seventeen years 

 later. The text, however, remains unaltered. 



•III. The MSS. 



An examination of the volume of MSS. which forms the true 

 subject of this paper shows that the account quoted at the outset from 

 the Library Catalogue, though in the main accurate, conveys an in- 

 adequate notion of its contents. It consists of several portions, the 

 most interesting of which is the series of 122 folios of exquisitely 

 executed drawings in Indian ink ; these formed the basis of the 

 published volume, the engravings in which give an insufficient 

 notion of the delicacy of Morandi's originals. The published volume, 

 however, contains a much larger number of figures, and some of those 

 in the MS., e. g. the monstrosities of Plantago (f. 15-5), are not 

 reproduced. Besides these there are in Morandi's beautiful hand 

 four MSS., two of whicli, written in double colunnis (Latin and 

 Italian) are of considerable extent. 



The first — ''Explicatio Plantarum" (47 pp.) — begins with a draft of 

 pp. 31-32 of the " Explicatio " in the published volume : the headings 

 of each division are identical with the latter, but only a list of the 

 names of the genera with references to avithors is given under each, 

 and the names do not always correspond with those published, 

 although the plants themselves do so. 



It is evident from this MS. that the plan of the work was more 

 extensive than its execution. The last division m the published 

 volume, headed " Flores polypetalo, personato, innato apici ovarii, 

 semine pulverulento " is in the MS. followed on the same page by 

 " l*lanta3 Monocotyledones foliis terniinalibus carentes ApetaUt " and 

 other sections which include Cgperaccce, Jinicacecc', and Grttininece ; 

 these are followed by six jiages headed '• Arbores et Frutices quai in 

 pregressiu stirpium sene nou apparent " ; of all these there is no 



