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mainly used as household books, many of them have disappeared 
and those that have come down to us are unfortunately too often 
in a dilapidated and battered condition. Both of the copies in 
the Garden library are still in their original vellum bindings. 
The copy of the ‘‘ Herbarius’’ was printed in Venice in 1509 and 
also treats of the various medical uses of herbs. Another edition 
of the same work, ‘“ Herbolario,” comes from Venice, 1540. 
They contain numerous coarse woods-cuts that often but doubt- 
fully illustrate the plants described. That these blocks were 
copied from older editions, or even were old ones borrowed and 
often repeated, there is no doubt and this fact is emphasized by 
the delicate little sixteenth century cut of the Annunciation in the 
“ Herbolario,”’ showing the great advance of the graphic art of 
wood-cutting over that of the fifteenth century, and over the blocks 
illustrating the herbs contained in the same volume and which 
evidently were taken from a much earlier edition. 
From the ‘‘ Herbolario "' to the superb folio edition of Rivinus 
is a long interval and the Garden has rightly a pride in its beauti- 
ful example of this famous old herbal. It was printed in Leip- 
zig in 1690 and is fortunately a complete copy containing 402 
full-page illustrations that are among the finest and most perfect 
delineations of plants of any time. 
Another series of interesting plates are those in Rumphius’ 
‘Herbarium Amboinense,” which deals with the flora of Malaysia 
in 1741, a beautiful and complete set in its original binding of 
dull red and yellow marbled levant. 
Another unusual bookis the “ Hortus Eystettensis,” a huge folio 
bound in vellum containing plates representing plants grown in the 
garden of the Bishop of the old Bavarian town of Eichstadt, in 1613, 
and doubtfully referred to the authorship of the Apothecary Besler. 
he figures are boldly executed steel engravings of well-known 
garden plants, daffodils, narcissus, both single and double, tulips, 
lilies, roses, irises, native European orchids, many herbs, an in- 
teresting series of carnations and lastly a series of autumn flowers 
and fruits, beginning with two great figures of the tomato, under 
the name of “Pome amoris fructu rubro,” recalling a name still 
used locally in some parts of France, ‘‘ Pomme d’Amot 
