800 ON THE ORIGIN OF HERBARIA. 
by Mattioli to be incorrect ; he says :—* Hoc iconibus pluribus evenire 
solet, quando et quoties lineamenta ex plantis siccis rugosis et. contractis 
designare cogimur." It therefore seems that he really was not ac- 
quainted with properly dried and preserved plants. 
We have more certain information about some Italian herbaria of the 
same period, Ulysses Aldrovandus, of Bologna (born 1522, died 1605), 
had collected many natural objects, which at his death he bequeathed to 
the university of his native town. Ovidius Montalbanus, keeper of this 
collection in the middle of the seventeenth century, records among the 
manuscripts left by Aldrovandus, an ‘Index Plantarum Omnium,’ 
"quas in 16 voluminibus diversis temporibus exsiceatas agglutinavit." 
Of the nature of this herbarium, which probably contained more so- 
called curiosities than different species of plants, we may learn some- 
what from the singular contents of the * Dendrologia? of Aldrovandus 
which was published by Montalbanus, at Bologna, in 1668. The collec- 
tion of such curiosities depended, no doubt, upon the taste of the collector 
himself, yet he must have been greatly influenced by the ideas of the 
times in which he lived. The two herbaria however, mentioned by An- 
drea Ceesalpino in the dedication of his work * De Plantis Libri XVI,’ 
were undoubtedly of a very different kind. “Tibi autem, serenissime 
Francisce,” he says to the Grand Duke, ** munusculum hoe, quodcunque 
sit, nuneupo : tibi enim jure debetur, apud quem exstat ejus rudimen- 
tum ez plantis libro agglutinatis utcunque a me multo antea jussu 
Cosmi patris tui compositum eum pollicitatione, ut Deo favente ali- 
quando absolutum traderem. Ejusdem alterum exstat exemplum apud 
clarissimam familiam Tornabonam, Reverendissimo Alphonso Antistiti 
Burgensi per me similiter paratum ; que, etsi ob materia fugacem na- 
turam nequaquam perennia futura sint, adhuc tamen vigere scio in 
testimonium eorum, quie in hoc volumine a me dicuntur; purissimam 
scilicet stirpium historiam continente, nullis figmentis adulteratam, 
? 
qualem sæpe in impressis picturis inspicimus.” The Grand Duke,’ 
Cosmo I., died in 1574; the formation of those herbaria must there- 
fore have been about 15 60, if not earlier. 
As soon as the method of preserving plants by pressing them be- 
tween sheets of paper became known, it would be especially useful to 
botanical travellers, and so we read that Rauwolf brought home five 
hundred and thirteen dried plants from. the East, where he was from 
1578 to 1576. These were preserved in the library at Leyden, and 
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