18 THE NEW BIOLOGY 



preliminary botanical studies must have been slight, all 

 the more because botany was only one of his occupa- 

 tions during this busy time. He got help from several 

 botanists, who are known to have worked at the plants 

 found in the country round Strasburg; his own share 

 in the work perhaps consisted largely in incorporating 

 with the information supplied by field-naturalists pass- 

 ages from the Materia Medica of Dioscorides, which 

 had been lately translated into Latin by Euel and 

 others. 



Brunfels' herbal, in Latin and German, is illustrated 

 by near three hundred figures of plants, drawn by Hans 

 Weydiz, a celebrated artist of the time, or by his assis- 

 tants. The plants are shown in clear outline, and are 

 sometimes so faithfully copied that it is still possible to 

 pick out those which were set before the draughtsman 

 in a defective condition. Other figures are less adequate ; 

 though the species is often determinable, it is not always 

 possible to make out even the genus. Sometimes the 

 figures and the descriptions do not correspond ; thus 

 descriptions of Aristolochia extracted from Dioscorides 

 and Pliny are illustrated by figures of two species of 

 Corydalis.^ 



The modern reader will shortly describe Brunfels' 

 arrangement of plants as haphazard, and such it often 

 is. If we come across the trace of a natural grouping, 

 we shall probably find that it is taken from Dioscorides. 

 Like Dioscorides and the pharmacists who succeeded 

 him, Brunfels is inclined to put together plants which 

 are supposed to share the same properties. But we can 

 only account for some of his sequences by supposing 

 that he inserted the species just as they came in. 



Brunfels' Eicones went through several editions, and 



^Greene, loc, cit., p. 173. 



I 



