172 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. S4 



next year Brunfels, now newly-appointed physician to the city of 

 Berne, removed thither; where also after only a year and a half of 

 service he died in 1534. 



After having ceased from theological authorship, and subse- 

 quently to his having taken a degree in medicine, Brunfels pub- 

 lished several medical works; but both theology and medicine 

 appear to have forgotten his name. In the history of botany 

 only is he immortal ; and this because he was intensely a lover of 

 nature and of plants. His book gives proof of this, although the 

 figures are the best part of it. It was because his love of plants 

 could not tolerate the absurd pictures then common, that he 

 resolved to produce something in that line true to nature, 

 despite the cost; for the employing of the best artist of his time 

 can not have been less than very expensive to him, and there may 

 have been no clear prospect of any return, even of that which the 

 plates cost him. Indeed no one can assert that there ever was any. 

 But here was devotion to an ideal; a love of plants that was bent 

 upon procuring faithful representations of them in books. And so 

 a well marked epoch in the study of the plant world dates from 

 Brunfels and the year 1530. 



To the botanical memory of this ex-Carthusian, the Franciscan 

 monk Charles Plumier dedicated the genus Brunfelsia in the year 



1703- 



^Phytographj^ If by a man's phytography is meant his manner 

 of describing plants, that is his word-picturing of them, it cannot 

 be said of Brunfels that he has any; and Julius von SacHs was never 

 farther from writing history than when he set this man forth as 

 among those who "went straight to nature, and described the wild 

 plants growing around them."i Brunfels publicly disclaims all 

 purpose of writing verbal descriptions of any plants whatever, 

 and in the following terms: 



" In this whole work I have no other end in view than that of 

 giving a prop to fallen botany ; to bring back to life a science almost 

 extinct. And because this has seemed to me to be in no other way 

 possible than by trusting aside all the old herbals, and publishing 

 new and really life-like engravings, and along with them accurate 

 descriptions extracted from ancient and trustworthy authors, I have 

 attempted both; using the greatest care and pains that both should 

 be faithfully done." 2 



His meaning as to phytography is plain. He will describe 



' Sachs, Geschichte der Botanik, p. 4, 



- Epistle Dedicatory, to the Senate of Strassburg, second page. 



