AN OLD HERBAL 29 



craft expressed in his engraving the features of each 

 drawing that he seems to have contended with the 

 draughtsmen for glory and victory." 



The drawings are in outline only, with little or no 

 shading, the work of colouring being left, as was mostly 

 the case in similar works of this period, to the owner of 

 the volume. The beauty of the woodcuts was at once 

 recognised, and succeeding publishers were not slow to 

 make use of them. Indeed, the illustrations of the 

 octavo edition were freely pirated, and became familiar 

 in England through their reproduction in the Herball 

 of Dr Turner, Dean of Wells, " the Father of English 

 Botany," and also in Lyte's Niewe Herball, published a 

 few years later. 



But while the main glory of Fuchs' Herbal is to be 

 ~iound in the engravings, the letterpress shows a distinct 

 advance on previous botanical writings The descrip- 

 tions of plants, especially in the German edition, are 

 for the period remarkably good, and moreover, the Latin 

 edition possesses a glossary of technical terms which is 

 the first of its kind known in botanical literature. 

 Many of these explanations are of distinct interest, as 

 when he compares an umbel to the parasol or umbrella 

 which ladies are wont to carry to keep off the heat and 

 glare of the sun. The arrangement of species in the 

 Herbal is alphabetical, according to the Greek names of 

 the genera, and sometimes, after the manner of the age, 

 plants are associated which have no scientific relation- 

 ship. Thus the violet and the dame's violet are placed 

 together, and the grass of Parnassus is reckoned among 

 the grasses. The original edition opens with a most 

 interesting Latin preface, from which it is abundantly 

 clear that with Leonhard Fuchs the pursuit of botany 



