50 The Botanical Renaissance [ch. 



date from the year 1530, when the first part of Brunfels' 

 work, the ' Herbarum vivse eicones,' was published by 

 Schott of Strasburg. In this book, with its beautiful and 

 naturalistic illustrations, there is, as the title indicates, a 

 real return to nature ; the plants are represented as they 

 are, and not in the conventionalised aspect which had 

 become traditional in the earlier herbals, through successive 

 copying by one artist from another, without reference to the 

 plants themselves. The blocks for the ' Herbarum vivae 

 eicones' were executed by Hans Weiditz, who was probably 

 also the draughtsman. Examples are shown in Text-figs. 

 ,22, 23, 24, 25, 82, 83 and 84. 



The illustrations of Brunfels' herbal are incomparably 



i better than the text, which is very poor, and largely borrowed 



! from previous writers. Brunfels' knowledge of botany was 



chiefly derived from the study of certain Italian authors, 



Manardus and others, who spent their time in trying to 



identify the plants they saw growing around them with 



those described by Dioscorides. This was by no means 



unreasonable in their case, since it was the plants of the 



Mediterranean region that Dioscorides had enumerated. 



When, however, Brunfels attempted to employ the same 



methods in his examination of the flora of the Strasburg 



district, and the left bank of the Rhine, many difficulties 



and discrepancies arose. He had no understanding of the 



'geographical distribution of plants, and did not realise that 



[ different regions have dissimilar floras. It is curious that 



this should have been so, when we remember that Theo- 



phrastus, more than eighteen hundred years earlier, had 



clearly pointed out that the provinces of Asia have each 



their own characteristic plants, and that some, which occur 



in one region, are absent from another. 



Hieronymus Bock, who in his Latin writings called him- 

 self Tragus (Text-fig. 26), was a contemporary of Brunfels, 

 though his botanical work was somewhat later in date. 

 He was born in 1498, and destined by his parents for the 

 cloister. But he proved to have no vocation for the 

 monastic life, and, having passed through a university 

 course, he obtained, by favour of the Count Palatine 

 Ludwig, the post of school teacher at Zweibriicken, and 

 overseer of the Count's garden. After his patron's death 



