H2 ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW 
The Ortus 
Sanitatis. 
be mentioned in connection with Crescentiis that a beautiful French 
manuscript of the work referred to above was disposed of in the sale 
of the Earl of Cork’s library in 1905, and was purchased by Mr. 
Quaritch for £ 2,600 . The Liber Serapionis of Simon Januensis, 
dated 1473, is the second oldest printed book at Kew. This pro- 
duction is based on the writings of the younger Serapion, an Arab. 
One of the rarest books in the Library is the small Herbarius, 
printed at Mainz in 1484. It is sometimes described as the first book 
printed in Germany containing botanical illustrations, but an earlier 
work, the Buck der Natur of Conrad von Megenberg, which first 
appeared at Augsburg in 1475, contains a few woodcuts of plants. 
An excellent copy of the 1482 edition was presented by the Bentham 
Trustees. 
A curious volume is the Herbarius zu Teutsch, or, as it is popu- 
larly known, the Ortus Sanitatis, printed at Mainz in 1485. This 
work is in German, and contains rude figures of plants. 
The first dated Latin edition (1491) and several other 
editions are at Kew, as well as a German manuscript 
of about the year 1370. Le Grant Herbier, a French translation of 
the German Herbarius, is represented by two undated editions, and 
the English form of Le Grant Herbier, known under the title of “ The 
Grete Herbal,” and dated 1526, is the earliest printed book in the 
English language at Kew. The work of Dioscorides, a Greek physician 
who flourished about the middle of the first century, was first printed 
at Cologne, in Latin, in 1478. The Library contains the Latin edition 
published in 1549, an d the second Greek edition of 1518, besides several 
commentaries on the writings of Dioscorides, of which the chief are 
those of Mattioli, some of which, it is worthy of note, are remarkable 
for the excellence of their illustrations. The famous Dioscoridian 
Codex, preserved in the Imperial Library of Vienna, dating from about 
the year 512, has been reproduced in facsimile by photography, and a 
copy of the reproduction, in two large folio volumes, was presented 
to the Library by the Bentham Trustees. It is especially interesting, 
as it “ supplies the earliest authentic evidence of the traditional belief 
as to the plants known by the names which Dioscorides actually 
cited.” A work of great historical interest is the De Proprietatibus 
Rerum of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, or Glanville, of which numerous 
editions in Latin and French have appeared. Kew has a Latin edition 
dated 1483, and also an English edition printed at the press of Thomas 
