GLIMPSES OF OLD HERBALS. 



259 



supplemented by wood cuts, usually accurate and 

 often excellent representations of plants, and which 

 can in most cases be readily identified with our 

 modern species and varieties. 



We learn from Pliny that paintings of plants 

 were extant in the first century, and we hear of 

 illustrated manuscripts of Dioscorides more than a 

 thousand years old, but these illustrations were 

 probably of little 

 value if we judge 

 by those copied in 

 Dodonseus Pemp- 

 tades, 1583, from 

 the Codex Casareus 

 in the imperial li- 

 brary of Vienna, 

 ascribed to the 

 year 492. The 

 wood cut of Arc- 

 tion is an example 

 of this. The first 

 illustrated botani- 

 cal work after the 

 invention of print- 

 ing is said to be 

 German, The Book 

 of Nature, p u b - 

 hshed at Augs- 

 burg between the 

 years 1475 and 

 1478, in which 176 

 plants are noticed 

 and many figured. 

 This was followed 

 by the Herbariiis 

 Maguntae 1484, the 

 Herbarius Patavics 

 i486, and about 

 the same period 

 the Ortus Sajti- 

 tatis. 



Among n o t e - 

 worthy books, 

 without whose 

 mention even a 

 sketch of early 



botany would be incomplete, is the book of agricul- 

 ture of Ibn-al-awam, a Moorish Spaniard of the 

 twelfth century, in which we find a chapter on the 

 cultivation of spinage, which he calls 7-ais al hoii- 

 quol, the prince of vegetables. Albertus Magnus' 

 (born 1 193, died 1280) De Vegetabi/um, in which we 

 find mention of the white flower of Cucurbita, 

 which identifies the cucurbit of his time with the 



The Tree which produced Swim 



DURET, 



common bottle gourd, Lagenaria. Among books 

 which throw side light on the history of vegetables 

 are the cook-book of Apicius Cceleus, of the Roman 

 period, and the Forme of Cury, a cook-book com- 

 piled in England in 1390 for the use of the court of 

 " kyng Richard the Secunde kyng of .ngland aftir 

 the conquest ; the which was accounted the best 

 and ryallest vyand of alle csten .iynges." We find 



here "spynoches," 

 which seems to 

 dispute the asser- 

 tion of DeCandolle 

 that spinage was 

 new to Europe in 

 the sixteenth cen- 

 tury. O f course 

 among noteworthy 

 publications it is 

 unnecessary to 

 mention the well- 

 known Pliny, 

 Columella, Palla- 

 dius, etc., among 

 the Romans, the 

 Geoponica,Diosco. 

 rides, Theophras- 

 tus, etc., among 

 the Greeks, or 

 Crescentius, 1235- 

 1320, whose Opiis 

 Ruralium, 1474, is 

 now before m e , 

 Nor is it within the 

 present scheme to 

 consider the non- 

 illustrated works. 



My earliest her- 

 bal is the Her- 

 baritis Maguiita, 

 printed in 1484. It 

 i s a small folio, 

 unpaged, contain- 

 ing 1 50 chapters 

 and wood- cuts, 

 each occupying a 

 single leaf, the 

 language Latin, the type black letter, the arrange- 

 ment alphabetical, the descriptions scarcely any, 

 the medicinal uses quite fully given. The wood- 

 cuts are simply atrocious, in many cases not recog- 

 nizable ; in other cases they can be determined only 

 through the assistance afforded by the names. 

 The figure of the lettuce here reproduced will give an 

 idea of the rudeness of the design and execution of 



MING Fishes «nd Flying Birds. 

 1605. 



