MANUSCRIPT AND PRINTED HERBALS 69 



compile a book in which could be gardyn and wedys of ye feldys as 



contained the virtue and nature of ^gQ ^s by costly receptes of the 



many herbs and other created thmgs, , j ,, 



together with their true colours and potycarys prepayred. 



for the help of all the world, and the 



common good, therefore I caused 



this praiseworthy work to be begun 



by a Master learned in physic who, 



at my request gathered into a book 



the nature and virtue of many herbs 



out of the acknowledged masters of 



physic, Galen, Avicenna, Serapio, 



Dioscorides, Pandectarius, Platearius 



and others." 



The illustrations in the Crete Herball are poor, being merely 

 inferior copies of those in the later editions of the Herbarius zu 

 Teutsch} In the majority of cases it is impossible to identify 

 the plant from the figure, and the same figure is sometimes 

 prefixed to different plants. But if the illustrations are poor 

 and duU the frontispiece and the full-page woodcut of the 

 printer's mark are very much the reverse. The frontispiece is 

 a charming woodcut of a man holding a spade in his right hand 

 and gathering grapes, and a woman throwing flowers and herbs 

 out of her apron into a basket. There are two figures in the 

 lower corners, the one of a male and the other of a female man- 

 drake. The woodcut of the printer's mark at the end sheds 

 an interesting ray of fight on the Peter Treveris who issued the 

 two first editions of this Herball.^ The woodcut represents 

 two wodows ^ (savages), a man and a woman, on either side 

 of a tree, from which is suspended a shield with Peter Treveris's 



1 The illustrations in the second and later editions of the Herbarius zu 

 Teiitsch are very inferior to those in the first, which are beautiful. The 

 verluose boke of Disiillacyon of the waters of all matter of Herbes (1527), 

 translated by Laurence Andrew from the Liber de arte distillandi by Hieronymus 

 Braunschweig, is illustrated with cuts from the same wood-blocks as the 

 Crete Herball. 



2 Titles and dates of the subsequent editions issued by Thomas Gibson 

 (1539) and Jhon Kynge (1561) will be found in the Bibliography of English 

 Herbals. 



3 Treveris had his printing office in Southwark, at the sign of the " Wodows." 



