12 



Fifteenth-Century Herbals 



[CH. 



Africa, and that his book may date from the fifth century, 

 or possibly even the fourth. The work undoubtedly 

 had a career of many centuries in manuscript before it 

 was printed. 



Text-fig. 



Plantago" = Plantain [Herbarium Apuleii Platonici, ? 1484]- 



Various extant manuscripts of the Herbarium are illus- 

 trated with coloured drawings of the crudest description, 

 which are found on comparison to be identical in many 

 different examples, and to have been reproduced, in a 

 degraded form, when the book was printed. The original 

 figures, from which the drawings in the different manuscripts 

 were copied, must date back to very early times. They 

 probably represent, as Dr Payne has pointed out, a school 

 of botanical draughtsmanship derived from late Roman art. 



