BRUXFELS AND FUCHS 239 



modern illustrators who collect bits of plants or one flower, and are 

 ignorant of the whole. 



These two figures are of the greater interest in that being so 

 completelj satisfactory they were copied by Fuchs' men, and very 

 badly copied at that. The appearance of adaptations of these figures 

 in Fuchs (oBo, 53(5) is sufficient evidence that the former had 

 Brunfels' work as a guide : while their mode of dealing witl\ them 

 sufficiently displays their weakness as copyists and scientific observers 

 (proof of copying is always given by the reversal of the figure in 

 cutting and printing a second time : cf. Ar. 14?1). The adaptation of 

 Nymphcea is badly done ; the central detail of the flower is ignored, 

 and made a decorative muddle ; the aspect of the plant is wholly 

 changed by the thickening of the petioles, and by losing the sense of 

 the long straight stalk of the flower: the detail of the rhizome is left 

 out. On the other hand, JSfiiphar is deliberately faked till it is 

 almost unrecognizable ; the curves are lost, the petioles thickened and 

 all the damaged submerged leaves repaired by ti-ansf erring those of 

 Hy niphce a -^'Atiei'n : a second flower, a failure, is added to complete 

 the picture, though Nuphar shoots do not produce two blossoms at 

 the same time. Uncomprehended details of the rhizome and roots 

 are equally scamped : it is obviously" more difficult to repeat a mis- 

 understood abstract drawing than to copy concrete examples of the 

 living plant *. 



The fine effect of these two bold figures, filling 02)posite sides of 

 the same opening, shows at once the origin of the idea of Fuchs in 

 taking a still larger page, and so fixing the size of the future herbal. 

 While in Brunfels the figures are mainly "illustrations" to illuminate 

 and decorate the text, which does not explain them — only half of 

 them being printed as whole-page figures, and the others incorporated 

 with the text, often so neatly that the text balances the design, — 

 Fuchs definitely inaugurated the " page-plate " as we term it ; and 

 each figure stands as an individual design without reference to 

 an3"thing else f. That subsequent herbalists (Ma tthiolus, Lobelius, 

 Dodontfius) all descended again to text-figures, must not obscure the 

 fact that Fuchs first clearly saw the advantage of the best drawings 

 of Brunfels, and gave increased significance to his illustrations as 

 distinct from the text. The fact that the production of these plates 

 must have taken some years after the death of Bi-unfels, and that it 

 is evident that the work of Brunfels was in the hands of Fuchs' men, 

 suggests more definitely that they used this work as a basis on which 

 to learn their botanical methods ; and that the curious difference in 

 merit of some of their designs indicates their gradual improvement as 



* It is interesting to trace the further decadence of these figures in the 

 successive reduction of Fuchs' blocks in translations ; cf. French Trans. (1549) 

 cciii,, 4i by 2j in. and (1550) Lyon, p. 374, to 2^ by \\. In the smaller 

 texts (Du Pinet, Leyden, 1561, p. 404 ; Linocier, Paris, 1620, p. 412) they are 

 replaced by still inferior copies of a picture-block from Matthiolus (Ar. 144). 

 The 4^-in. copies may be seen in Turner (1551), ii. p. 65 ; but being poor they are 

 replaced in other herbals (Gerard, etc.). 



t Only a couple of small figures of Mosses are printed in Fuchs as text- 

 illustrations — Polytrichum with gracefully- curved setae (p. 629). 



