64 The Botanical Renaissance [ch. 



as a model for the order of description of each plant. Fuchs' 

 text, as well as his figures, may thus be said to have had an 

 effect, even if an indirect one, on British botany, since the 

 herbals of Lyte and of Gerard are based on the work of 

 Dodoens, in which, as we have just shown, the influence 

 of Fuchs is clearly felt. 



The publisher Christian Egenolph of Frankfort, though 

 not himself a botanical writer, must be mentioned at this 

 stage, because he brought out, in 1533, a set of plant illus- 

 trations which became particularly well known (e.g. Text- 

 figs. 33 and 85). They do not reflect any great credit on 

 Egenolph, since they were mostly pirated from Brunfels. 

 They were not even used to illustrate a new herbal, but 

 merely a new edition of the old German Herbarius, enlarged 

 and improved by Dr Eucharias Rhodion, and issued under 

 the name of ' Kreutterbuch von allem Erdtgewachs.' 



Egenolph was evidently a keen man of business, for he 

 made his figures do duty over and over again. He used 

 them not only as illustrations to the herbal, but as a 

 separate publication, without any letter-press, and also in 

 conjunction with an entirely unrelated text, such, for ex- 

 ample, as a Latin version of Dioscorides. Many later 

 editions of the Kreutterbuch appeared, and to these a 

 number of figures were added, chiefly copies, on a reduced 

 scale, from those of Bock, who had himself made consider- 

 able use of the drawings in the octavo edition of Fuchs' 

 herbal. The editions produced under the auspices of Adam 

 Lonicer, the publisher's son-in-law, are particularly well 

 known. No other botanical works of the period had a 

 success comparable to that of this long series of books, of 

 which Rhodion's 'Kreutterbuch' was the prototype. This 

 success was, however, achieved in the teeth of much ad- 

 verse contemporary criticism. Fuchs, in the preface of his 

 'Historia stirpium' (1542), referred with unsparing touch 

 to Egenolph's botanical mistakes. His trenchant indict- 

 ment may be rendered into English as follows — "Among 

 all the herbals which exist to-day, there are none which 

 have more of the crassest errors than those which 

 Egenolph, the printer, has already published again and 

 again." This statement Fuchs supports by means of actual 

 examples. 



