298 ON THE ORIGIN OF HERBARIA. 
ploying them. This indeed was my case until lately. An intelligent 
inqui paring a paper on this subject, asked me who 
formed the earliest herbaria ? where were the first records about such 
things to be found? and who first published anything on the drying of 
plants? I was the more struck by these questions, from the very little 
I knew about them. I gradually however remembered some facts re- 
lating to the early history of herbaria, and continuing my inquiries, I 
ascertained several others, whieh I shall now give, as a commencement, 
which I trust will be added to by others. 
We must first notice that the word ‘herbarium,’ when used by the 
older authors, had a very different meaning from that which we now 
attach to it. To them it meant a book of plants, especially one illus- 
trated with figures. Thus, we often read in Tournefort and later writers 
of the Herbarium of Fuchs, meaning his * Historia Stirpium,’ the Her- 
barium of Mattioli, that is, his Commentary on Dioscorides, and the 
like. The name ‘herbarium vivum " was introduced in order to distin- 
guish what we now mean by ‘herbarium’ from these books ; but even 
this did not prevent ambiguity. Emanuel Koenig, among others, who 
in his * Regnum Vegetabile, Basle, 1708, writes a long chapter “ De 
collectione plantarum vulgari, medica, et astrologica,” p. 539 ef seq., 
tells us :—“ Præcipue autem notatu dignissimum, quod circa pictas 
plantas refert Tournefortius, regis fratrem exquisito artificio herbarium 
; epictum possidere, nee secus ac tale Serenissimus rex Prussiee 
peregrinis commonstravit.” He here evidently refers to drawings, but 
a few lines further on he gives instructions to make “ herbarium, ut 
vocant, vivum,” using the word in its modern sense. 
Adrian Spiegel, as far as I know, gave the first instruction for drying 
plants, in his * Isagoges in Rem Herbariam, Leyden, 1606, at the 79th 
and following pages. On page 78 he recommends the frequent exami- 
nation of living plants, but adds that during the winter, when nearly all 
the plants have perished, and so cannot be obtained for examination, 
one must examine the winter garden (hortos hyemales) ; by this term, 
he says, he means volumes which contain plants dried and glued on 
the paper. It is evident that this method of preserving plants must 
have been then of recent introduetion, as no generally accepted name 
wasinuse. I do not find a specific name for a herbarium before Spiegel, 
yet the thing itself did exist, but when spoken of by authors it was 
always by a circumlocution. 
