BOCK 21 



generally made in peasant's dress, so as to excite little 

 notice. The excursions gradually took a wide range ; 

 many places between the Ehine and the Moselle were 

 visited, besides countries as distant as Switzerland and 

 Tyrol. Bock, who seems to have been a sociable, 

 friendly man, became known in some of the Rhenish 

 cities, especially to Brunfels and other botanists of 

 Strasburg ; he corresponded also with Gesner of Zurich. 

 A young man, named Jacob Theodor of Berg-zabern, 

 who was afterwards known throughout Europe as 

 Tabernsemontanus, was first a pupil and afterwards an 

 assistant of Bock's during this Hornbach time. Bock 

 himself tells how his honoured friend Brunfels came 

 out on foot from Strasburg to Hornbach (some sixty 

 English miles) and pressed him to write in the mother- 

 tongue a new herbal for the instruction of the German 

 people. 



Bock spent some fifteen years amidst these occupa- 

 tions, disturbed only by symptoms of waning health, 

 but about the year 1548 he was called upon to face 

 changes disastrous to his happiness. By this time the 

 herbal in its German form was complete. The pros- 

 pects of the Reformation in Germany had meanwhile 

 become clouded ; a new duke of Zweibriicken and a new 

 abbot of Hornbach withdrew their support from the 

 Lutheran pastor, who was obliged to remove for a time 

 to Saarbriicken, where the count, whom Bock had 

 treated successfully in grave illness, ofi^red hospitality 

 and countenance. Allhis ten children except two died 

 before him, and the only surviving son was deprived 

 of the Hornbach canonry, which the father had resigned 

 in his favour.^ Amidst calamities like these a wasting 



^Bock returned to Hornbach not long before his death, and was buried 

 there ; whether he was reinstated as pastor is not known. 



