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XX. 
ADDRESS. 
THE HISTORY OF BOTANIC ILLUSTRATION. 
By the President, B. Daydon Jackson, E.L.S., General Secretary 
of the Linnean Society. 
Delivered at the Anniversary Meeting at Watford , 8 th March , 1905. 
PLATES I-III. 
Ladies and Gentlemen,— 
At our last Anniversary Meeting I had the honour to offer some 
remarks on a topic of local interest—the labours of some Hertford¬ 
shire botanists. This evening I purpose asking your attention to 
a matter less restricted in space and time, namely, the history of 
botanic illustration from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. 
As an indispensable preliminary I must define the sense in which 
I use the term illustration. By it I mean a representation in 
printing-ink or some similar medium, capable of identic reproduction 
in considerable numbers. Thus I am excluding all sketches or 
drawings which need to be copied by hand, and all purely photo¬ 
graphic prints. Another limitation is the exclusion of colour; it 
would lead me too far for this Address, and furthermore it does not 
readily lend itself for use in the lantern. 
We may consider illustration thus defined to consist of three 
main methods: 
(1) When the design projects from the surface, and the ink is 
applied only to the elevations, 
(2) When the design is cut into the surface, and the ink remains 
only in the depressions, and 
(3) When the surface is practically level, the design being 
reproduced by chemical action, as in lithography. 
1. Surface Design (Wood-engraving).— This method was the 
first to be employed in illustration, and the early forms of it are 
well-known under the name of block-books, in which the drawing 
and the legend are printed from the selfsame block, as in Chinese 
printing at the present day. The introduction of movable type 
caused the text not only to be extended to giving the whole of 
treatises, but also confined the woodcuts to the ornamental part of 
illustration. As the art and mystery of printing became diffused, 
and was no longer confined to copying the Bible, books of 
devotion, and the classical writers, it became applied to works of 
more homely utility, such as medical treatises. It was in this 
way that the works of Dioseorides and the Arab physicians were 
