i22 NATURAL SCIENCES. 



errors which hampered the development of science. At the same time it 

 must be said that some very interesting books on Herbalism, enriched with 

 handsome wood engravings, were published at Mayence, Passau, and Louvain 

 some in Latin, and others in German before the great works of Arndes 

 and John de Cuba appeared at Lubeck in 1492. 



At Venice, too, were being printed with marvellous rapidity the works of 

 the ancient Arab physicians, Avicenna, Avenzoar, Averroes, and Mesue, 

 who treated of natural history in its relation to medicine ; and these publica- 

 tions only served to excite hostility against the Arabists, who had copied 

 Pliny with all his errors. A learned professor of Ferrara, Nicholas Leoniceno, 

 took this opportunity of attacking the Arabic school and its admirers, of 

 whom he said, " These people never saw the plants of which they speak ; 

 they steal their descriptions from the works of preceding authors, whose 

 meaning they often distort : this has led to a veritable chaos of erroneous 

 denominations, the confusion being further increased by the inaccuracy of the 

 descriptions." In this literary war, which showed how very imperfect was 

 the knowledge of natural history at the time when Pliny's work was being so 

 widely disseminated by the printing-press, Leoniceno was unjust towards the 

 great Roman naturalist, and this he was made to comprehend by the cele- 

 brated Venetian humanist, Ermolao Barbaro, in a reply in favour of Pliny. 

 The latter, in correction of the faults to be found in Pliny's work, published 

 a book entitled " Castigationes Plinianae," but that writer's "Natural 

 History " was for the time discredited in most of the schools in Italy. 



Taking advantage of this discredit, which increased the demand for the 

 works of Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Dioscorides, the Aldi, skilful Venetian 

 printers, brought out the original and hitherto unpublished texts of the 

 Greek naturalists. Aldus Manutius had himself revised, after the ancient 

 manuscripts, these priceless works, which were so anxiously scanned by the 

 lovers of antiquity. They published at about the same time other modern 

 works upon natural history, amongst them being several treatises of Georges 

 Valla upon plants, and a Botanic Lexicon after the Greek authors. The study 

 of botany was also in great favour amongst French savants. A Parisian 

 printer, Pierre Caron, published, about 1495, " L'Arbolayre," a new herbal 

 dictionary, illustrated with a great many wood engravings ; and this work, 

 extracted from the medical treatises of Avicenna, Rhazes, Constantino, Isaac, 

 and Plateaire, was reprinted, with the title of " Grand Herbier en Fra^ois," 



