IRINGUS AND VIOLA 311 
maker of the present figure is far from the thought of spines, and 
thinks rather of stiff rays. In these aster-like flower-heads we see 
the blending of Eryngium with Aster which was made by Mat- 
teo Silvatico, but we see no proper expression of the globular 
stellate-spined bur of the plant Eryngium. 
The text of the Aggregator’s /ringus, 32 lines, seems to blend 
Aster flowers with Eryngium in its remark that a kind of Iringus 
“bears a flower whose color is as the color of violets, except that 
they are larger than the violets, and when they fall they have a seed 
in great quantity like a chicory * seed”’; but other quotations from 
Serapion are mingled with this which have no relation to Aster 
A more extended description transferred from Aster occurs 
where the Aggregator writes of his /ringus that “ Pandecta in 
the same chapter on Yringus or Secacul, recommends the leaves of 
Tringus and Plantago boiled in water and vinegar, ‘zzflationt sto- 
machi, et apostematibus oculi et aliis apostematibus calidis’ : and 
some say that the flower of this herb, which is of a purple color, 
if you drink its decoction in water, cures sguinantia and epilentia 
quae accidit infantibus.’’ Working from the Pandect’s mixed 
description of Eryngium, “ Secacul,” and Aster, the Aggregator 
perpetuated this blending in its text, while the Ortus of not far 
from the same time still entangled the two somewhat in its text 
(retaining the potency of its “ Yringus” for ‘squinantia’’) and 
also confused them still more in its figures. It remained for 
Fuchs, in 1 531, to clear the subject finally, and show that Aster 
had been intended. See supra, Pp. 304. 
Viola forms another of the Aggregator’s uniform chapters, this 
time of 34 not 32 lines. The figure, though readily recognized 
for the violet, is unusually conventionalized, uniform hearts replac- 
ing the leaves, and uniform narrow pendant bells, the flowers, 
while, heedless of nature, the artist has sought to complete the 
symmetry of his perfectly balanced figure by forking the central 
flower stalk and dropping a flower from either side of it. 
The author credits his chapter on the Violet to «« Avicenna, 
Platearius, Pandecta.” | Aster-uses of his violet are those for 
* Chicory, if the printed céceris was an error in writing for cicoree, saber 
Spelling for cichoreae, which was a plant highly esteemed by him and forming a pre 
chapter, while cicer does not receive any separate description. 
