NATuRA RERUM 283 
fifteen years he labored, writes Pfeiffer, ‘to gather the sum of the 
natural history of the middle ages into one compendium.” 
The nineteen books treat first of the human body, and the races 
of man, then of quadrupeds, birds and other animals, trees and 
herbs, waters, precious stones, metals and climate, the planets, 
storm and thunder, the four elements, etc. Three books relate to 
plants, the roth, de arboribus communibus (beginning leaf 151 of 
the Stuttgart MS.), the 11th, de arboribus aromaticis (leaf 158), 
and the 12th, de herbis aromaticis et medicinalibus (leaf 164- 
169).* 
The work is best known to the world by its use by Conrad de 
Megenberg in 1349 as basis of his Buch der Natur, which, as 
reprinted by Pfeiffer in 1861, brings the substance of de Cantiprato 
into light, though in rearranged and expanded form, and with 
additions. 
Several MSS. of De Cantiprato exist in Paris. One in the li- 
brary of the University of Cracow has an added 2oth book, concern- 
ing eclipses, the motion of the stars, etc., which is not by Cantiprato 
but is the Sphacra naturalis of Joh. de Sancto Bosco or “‘ Johann 
von Holywood.”+ One in Paris (dated by its scribe in 1276) is 
also in 20 books. + 
De Cantiprato describes 114 plants ;{ does not mention Aster ; 
and is apparently free beyond most authors from traces of blending 
of other plants with the common Aster.$ His plant chapters are 
very largely drawn from Platearius, with Pliny as ultimate source ; 
only 16 sources are mentioned, chiefly Latin (with Galen), including 
Palladius, “ Ysidorus,” and “Jacobus Aconensis Bishop de 
Vitriaco.’’|| 
een 
* Quoted in the original Latin by Pfeiffer (in his reprint, 1861, of the Buch der 
Natur, p. xxxii), from the Stuttgart MS. (a MS. of 200 leaves, of the 5th century). 
t Peiffer. 
t Meyer, 
4 Fide the Buch der Natur. [ 
\| Vincent de Beauvais mentions De Cantiprato, writing himself but little later, but 
covering much of the same ground. Meyer thought that the other contemporary 
sil Obamas Bartholomew Anglicus, showed no knowledge of the existence of De 
tiprato. But i hat phrases whic 
and of ** flos sie pocgupanter ty of De Cantiprato’ s similar remarks about those 
flowers, and are indications of topics suggested by perusal of De Cantiprato. 
