iv] The Herbal in Italy 79 



of much importance, and he eventually quite forsook the 

 subject in favour of medicine. It has been suggested, 

 however, that de l'Obel was inclined to minimise the value 

 of his colleague's work. The system of classification, upon I 

 which de l'Obel's reputation really rests, is set forth in 

 this book. The main feature of his scheme is that he 

 distinguishes different groups by the peculiarities of their 

 leaves. He is thus led to make a rough separation between 

 the classes which we now call Dicotyledons and Monoco- 

 tyledons. The details of his system will be considered in 

 a later chapter. 



In 1576 the work was enlarged, and republished as the 

 ' Plantarum seu Stirpium Historia'; it was also translated 

 into Flemish, and appeared under the title of ' Kruydtbceck ' 

 in 1 58 1, dedicated to William of Orange, and the Burgo- 

 masters and other functionaries of Antwerp. The blocks 

 (see Text-fig. 67) used to illustrate this work were taken 

 from previous books, especially those of de l'Ecluse. Imme- 

 diately after the publication of the Kruydtbceck, Plantin 

 brought out an album of the engravings it had contained, 

 which, although they had been also used to illustrate the 

 herbals of Dodoens and de l'Ecluse, were now grouped 

 according to de l'Obel's arrangement, which was recognised 

 as the best. 



3. The Herbal in Italy. 



The Italian botanists of the Renaissance devoted them- 

 selves chiefly to interpreting the works of the classical 

 writers on Natural History, and to the identification of 

 the plants to which they referred. This came about quite 

 naturally, from the fact that the Mediterranean flora, which 

 they saw around them, was actually that with which the 

 writers in question had been, in their day, familiar. The 

 botanists of southern Europe were not compelled, as were 

 those whose homes lay north of the Alps, to distort facts 

 before they could make the plants of their native country 

 fit into the procrustean bed of classical descriptions. 



One of the chief of the commentators and herbalists of 

 this period was Pierandrea Mattioli [or Matthiolus] (Text- 

 fig. 40), who was born at Siena in 1501, and died of the 



