294 Asrer History: VINCENT DE BEAUVAIS 
tree growing in India and Arabia, etc.; and from Constantinus and 
Avicenna. 
Vincent’s series of herbaceous plant-chapters begins,* bk. X, 
with Absinthium, and ends, bk. XIV, with Zuccarum; just like 
Circa instans, and many an Herbarius of the following centuries. 
LII. CRESCENZzI 
Pietro Crescenzi,+ unique among Italian botanists, and called 
“the restorer of agriculture,’ completed, about 1305,{ his Bove: 
*T quote from the 1473 edition by Mentelin, father of printers at Seen 
copy of which is in the Libr, Union Theol. Sem., N. Y., and another in n the Latimer 
Ci: collection, forming a of the ‘* Wheeler Gift ’’ to st Amer. Institute of Elec- 
trical Engineers, N. Y.. This edition includes the 33 books in two volumes, royal 
folio, 66 lines to the page ; seas date, printer’s name or place, paging, catchword oF 
signature ; vol. i has 18 books, 318 leaves, and begins ‘‘ Incipit, specalt um naturale Vin- 
centii beluaces’’; vol. ii has 1 5 books, 327 leaves. Described as “ of the greatest 
variety,’’ ‘a superb monument of the sb art,’”’—* a more noble work than e 
present was never produced by the first printers,’’—it is of special interest from “ 
or wi 
claims set forth in behalf of its Se rea to have antedated Gutenberg ; 
more probability to have been his early associ 
later copy by Mentelin, 1476, is in the ‘dalled of the Grolier Club. A yet 
edition, in 52 lines, at Augsburg, was printed ( fide the type) ae ss said 
celebrated Nuremberg Chronicle printed by Koberger was a deriv : 
t Petrus de Crescentiis in original Latin form; Pietro ae in corte Italian, 
1478; this is also Sansovino’s form, 1561 ; Pietro Crescenzi, the form used by ante 
and others, and in the 1605 or Florence edition ; some scholarly Italians still say en 
Crescenzi or Crescentio indifferently. and 
Too little i is known of the life of this lover of nature. His birth and ace 
f- 
love for the country, OE his Ruralium when past 70, as he remarks in : a 
atory letter to Aimericus de Placentia, head of the Dominican order, W i sc 
0 
elected so at Toulouse, 1304. He dedicated his work to King Charles II 
who died 1309, we 
7 1309. ah was himself of a Ghibelline family, and speaks 7 his writing 
and Ce 
madex, 
Sel ae 
editors, Senator of Bologna ; he himself simply terms himself Czvis Bor 
Bologna he had a villa, 10 miles out, at Urbizzano, Feuds at Bologna 
of his life way, it is said for 30 years, acting in legal capacity as assessor be 
podestas. Besides life in other parts of Italy, he had spent much time in se 
which region many of his agricultural observations relate. He lived to —— rests 
