26o 



GLIMPSES OF OLD HERBALS. 



Lettuce. 



these old pictures. The Orfiis Sanitatis is another 

 book of the fifteenth century, but my edition bears 



date 1511. It is 

 printed in black let- 

 ter Latin, and is un- 

 paged. There are 

 530 chapters in the 

 plant portion, and 

 an equal bulk de- 

 voted to animals. 

 There is no work in 

 m y library which 

 affords more inter- 

 est to visitors, who 

 seem never to tire 

 of examining the 

 mermen and mer- 

 maids, the human- 

 headed snakes, the 

 griffins, harpies, and 

 other fabled animals 

 of antiquity. The 

 plant portion is less 

 grotesque. The 

 wood-cuts are rude, 

 usually unrecog- 

 ^484- nizable, yet some 



can be made out through the aid afforded by the 

 names. A few of the interesting illustrations are 

 here reproduced. The Arbor vel lignum vita para- 

 disii, the tree of Paradise, is apparently considered 

 to be the orange, yet a subsequent page gives a dif- 

 ferent figure, Zwa sive niitsa, perhaps the banana. 

 "The serpent did tempt me and I did eat.'' We 

 might hope to settle from these old books the mean- 

 ing of some old words, as the Phaseoli of Charle- 

 magne's Capitularies, about which there has been 

 so much dispute. But the faseolus of Dodonseus is 

 Vicia Na?-bonensis ; the phasiohis of Tragus is the 

 pea ; the faselen of Fuchsius is a bean ; but what is 

 the faseolus of the Ortus Sanitatis ? The Mandra- 

 gora or Mandrake illustrates the superstition of the 

 times rather better than the plant. Narcissus is 

 another of these curious figures, which, as it is cer- 

 tainly new to our flora, we will invite the editor of 

 The American Garden to name. All in all, how- 

 however, this work is but of little interest. 



We now come to a new era, where caricature as a 

 rule ceases, and where honest attempt is at once evi- 

 dent, and the drawings made from the living plant. 

 The first herbal I shall mention is the Ho-bariian 

 viva eicones of Oth. Brunfelsius. I have two edi- 

 tions of the first volume, the first dated 1530, 

 with 84 wood-cuts ; the second dated 1537, and con- 



taining 82 wood-cuts, some few being different from 

 the first edition. Volumes two and three are dated 

 1536. One feature of this work is the prevalence 

 of a short nomenclature, the omission to label 

 figures, and a number of repetitions. The figures 

 and descriptions of some do not agree. The wood- 

 cuts are well designed and executed, and in those 

 cases where I have compared with herbarium spe- 

 cimens I find are correctly delineated. As a rule, 

 Greek, Latin and German names are given. 



The Historia Stirpiian of Fuchsius, 1542, is a large 

 folio volume of 896 pages, with full page illustra- 

 tions. In my judgment, it excels all other herbals 

 in accuracy of delineation. In the frontispiece is a 

 figure of the author with a branch in his hand, evi- 

 dently studying from nature ; in the back of the 

 book are two draughtsmen working with a plant in 

 a vase before them. The wood-cuts, reduced in 

 scale, appear in various smaller editions, and are 

 found copied more or less correctly in many suc- 

 ceeding authors. The figures are very rarely inacu- 

 rate. One peculiarity is the extensive use of a 



The Tree of Paradise. 



single name or binomial in nomenclature. In Fuch- 

 sius we find the first certain figures of the pumpkin 

 extant. It is for this author that the fuchsia of our 

 conservatories was named. 



