BRUXFELS AXD FUCHS 237 



as we should say nowadays, and did not know the names of tlie 

 parts or their functions ; but merely copied them faithfully. He even 

 copied the broken leaves and drooping damaged shoots *. He is also 

 great on roots, fibrous, adventitious and borne at the nodes, or pulled 

 up and stripped clean. Fuchs' men inclined to treat roots as deco- 

 rative fibrous growths (F. 52, 88, 192, 317, 4-33, 623, 715). Brunfels 

 had not evolved the idea of putting flowers and fruits on the same 

 inflorescence, so common with his successors. 



The figures of both Brunfels and Fuchs are often criticised, and, 

 what is just as bad, admired, by people who have not the slightest 

 idea of what they were intended for, or how they were done. These 

 men did not set out to make pretty pictures or artistic sketches. In 

 the absence of modern botanical superiority all parts were equally 

 valuable. The whole plant was considered as an organism, roots and 

 all : they were not biassed in favour of roots because tliese were used 

 in medicine ; roots do not form a predominant feature of the Materia 

 Medica, any more than in Horticulture and Agriculture. Pharma- 

 ceutical material is restricted to the parts which may be more readily 

 handled and stored without damage t. To dig up a plant and wash it 

 clean, with as little damage as possible to radical leaves, etc., and then 

 draw it, presents an aspect of the type very different from the same 

 form growing in the ground. Anyone can try this for a Crocus or 

 Daisy, Primrose or a White Dead Nettle (Br. i. 152) J, without 

 attempting the more difficult case of a sacculent Comfrey or draggled 

 Water-lily. It is our own ignorance of the plant as a whole, and a 

 preference for pretty floral shoots, which makes the rooted plants of 

 the herbalists appear strange. It may be noted that neither Brunfels 

 nor Fuchs, even at their best, went out of their way to find foliage- 

 shoots with insect-eaten leaves as increasing the artistic effect. It is 

 not to be supposed that all these figures are equally good ; if they 

 were they Avould be better known ; but the marvel grows that they 

 were apparently the first studies of the small and trivial plants of 

 North Europe to be put on record in a scientific work §. 



Among the finest examples of Brunfels' work, which thus appear 



* Arber (p. 172) alludes to this as a failing, in the evolution of the 'ideal' 

 figure ; but this was before the days of the Cambridge British Flora : cf. Hunny- 

 bun, 74, 84,91, 105. 



f Dried stems, leaves, bark, roots, rhizomes: British Pharmacopoeia, 10 "/g 

 roots, 10 "'o rhizomes. 



J One can see in Brunfels' figure the clinging of the wet root-fibres. 



§ Nor need it be supposed that people in the sixteenth century could not 

 draw. A charming study by Albert Diirer, 1526, (Ar. 168) of a Columbine and 

 some grass, shows the perfect delicacy of possible presentation ; the flower is 

 poor, and if cut as a line-block would be no better than that of Fuchs (102) : 

 but making sketches, and figures for reproduction that can be cut in recognizable 

 form by the engraver, are two very different propositions. The engraver and the 

 printer are the sttimbling-blocks, as admirably exemplified by Arber's valuable 

 work, in which Herharius and the Ortus Saaitatis seem quite at home. The 

 same may be noted for example on comparing original drawings by Doyle with 

 the early cuts in Punch : even Du Maurier has left on record his ' weekly pang.' 

 The emulation of fifteenth century printing is not restricted to the Cambridge 

 Press : translations of PfefPer, Jost, and especially Knuth, by the Oxford Press, 

 are similarly defaced by crude block printing. 



