AECANA HORTENSIA (cont.) 
”Le Floriste Francois” (1654), p.174-175. A section entitled "Palingenesis” 
begins (p.6E) with a brief summary of writings on the subject, and proceeds 
with detailed directions (p.63-66) for making any plant rise, phoenix-like, 
from its ashes. This is found in Vallemont, "Curiositez de la nature et de 
I’art sur la v^getationl^ p.281-284 of the Dept. Agr. copy, published Paris, 
1711; but the work originally appeared in 1705, and had been translated into 
English and German before 1709. The "Appendix von sympathetisch- Oder heimb- 
lichen wurckungen der natur" (p.108-111) has a familiar sound, but it has not 
yet been traced to any other work, and we have made no special effort to iden¬ 
tify the brief recipes, most of which are probably taken from other books. 
Granting that Stelly may have received the bulk of his "Arcana horten- 
sia" in its entirety from someone else, it could not possibly have been ob¬ 
tained from any one book. Nearly all the material we have identified is ta¬ 
ken from works printed at one time or another by Chsirles de Sercy, who, from 
the evidence of the publications themselves, must have taken outrageous lib¬ 
erties with many of the books that cane from his press. But, while some of 
these were reissued in garbled and mutilated editions by de Sercy and other 
printers, and altho the contents of this particular book might easily have 
been extracted and put together by some Frenchman, possibly even de Sercy 
himself, it does not appear that anything corresponding to the "Arcana hor- 
tensia" was ever published in French, So it seems as if Stelly*s ingenious 
references to the distinguished original author may have been a mere fabri¬ 
cation intended to enhance the importance of his book, which actually was 
due solely to his diligence as a compiler. 
The title; "Arcana hortensia" vaguely suggests some other books, like 
De la Croyx, "Deliciae & arcana florum" (Collen, 1697); Lucianus, "Ifenuduc- 
tio ad deliciae hortenses" (Constantiae, 1670); iJiller, "Deliciae hortenses" 
(Stuttgart, 1709-10; said to be "vermehrt von Christian Anthophilus"); also 
Timotheus von Roll, "Newes blumen-buchlein" (Costantz, 1669). But altho it 
is possible that paragraphs from some of these may have been used in compil¬ 
ing the "Arcana^ none of the cursory comparisons that have been made show 
it to be definitely related to any of them. So far as the contents of the 
book have been identified, they are wholly taken from French publications, 
and nothing has been traced to any German work. 
