26 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 



spending one winter's afternoon in the dark recesses of 

 the Cathedral library, which contains little beyond 

 ponderous works of theology, I discovered, to my 

 amazement and delight, a copy of the same herbal 

 which had excited my admiration in the British Museum 

 some years before. How it came to be in such strange 

 and solemn company there was nothing to show. But 

 there it was, resting against an obsolete tome of 

 seventeenth-century theology Fuchs' botanical mas- 

 terpiece, De Historia Stirpium, the first edition, in folio, 

 written in Latin arid containing the same magnificent 

 illustrations. The recollection of Mr James Britten's 

 suggestion at once came back to me, and lifting 

 up the heavy volume, bound in the original oak 

 boards, I carried it across the close to my prebendal 

 quarters. 



No wonder that Mr Britten praised it. The work is, 

 beyond question, the most splendid, by reason of its 

 superb and original woodcuts, of the many herbals 

 which appeared in Germany, in England, in Switzer- 

 land, in Italy, in the Low Countries, during the revival 

 of learning in the sixteenth century. 



Leonhard Fuchs was born at Membdingen, in 

 Bavaria, in the year 1501, and at the early age of 

 thirteen is said to have graduated as B.A. at the Uni- 

 versity of Erfurt. He afterwards studied at Ingolstadt, 

 where he took a doctor's degree, and eventually became 

 Professor of Medicine in the University. At Ingolstadt 

 he fell under the influence of Luther's writings and be- 

 came, like so many of the Renaissance botanists, a stout 

 Protestant. During a terrible epidemic which swept 

 over Germany in 1529 he became widely known for his 

 successful treatment of the disease, and it is interesting 



