50 The Botanical Renaissance [ch. 



date from the year 1530, when the first part of Brunfels' 

 work, the ' Herbarum viva; eicones,' was pubHshed by 

 Schott of Strasburg. In this book, with its beautiful and 

 naturaHstic illustrations, there is, as the title indicates, a 

 real return to nature ; the plants are represented as they 

 are, and not in the conventionalised aspect which had 

 become traditional in the earlier herbals, through successive 

 copying by one artist from another, without reference to the 

 plants themselves. The blocks for the ' Herbarum vivse 

 eicones' were executed by Hans Weiditz, who was probably 

 also the draughtsman. Examples are shown in Text-figs. 

 22, 23, 24, 25, 82, 83 and 84. 



The illustrations of Brunfels' herbal are incomparably 

 better than the text, which is very poor, and largely borrowed 

 from previous writers. Brunfels' knowledge of botany was 

 chiefly derived from the study of certain Italian authors, 

 Manardus and others, who spent their time in trying to 

 identify the plants they saw growing around them with 

 those described by Dioscorides. This was by no means 

 unreasonable in their case, since it was the plants of the 

 Mediterranean region that Dioscorides had enumerated. 

 When, however, Brunfels attempted to employ the same 

 methods in his examination of the flora of the Strasburg 

 district, and the left bank of the Rhine, many difficulties 

 and discrepancies arose. He had no understanding of the 

 geographical distribution of plants, and did not realise that 

 different regions have dissimilar floras. It is curious that 

 this should have been so, when we remember that Theo- 

 phrastus, more than eighteen hundred years earlier, had 

 clearly pointed out that the provinces of Asia have each 

 their own characteristic plants, and that some, which occur 

 in one region, are absent from another. 



Hieronymus Bock, who in his Latin writings called him- 

 self Tragus (Text-fig. 26), was a contemporary of Brunfels, 

 though his botanical work was somewhat later in date. 

 He was born in 1498, and destined by his parents for the 

 cloister. But he proved to have no vocation for the 

 monastic life, and, having passed through a university 

 course, he obtained, by favour of the Count Palatine 

 Ludwig, the post of school teacher at Zweibriicken, and 

 overseer of the Count's garden. After his patron's death 



