 Section 12 of Herbal's Their Origin and Evolution, a chapter in the history of botany. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Kay Hand. Herbal's Their Origin and Evolution, a chapter in the history of botany by Agnes Arbor. Chapter 6, The Evolution of Plant Classification In the earliest European works on natural history, those of the Aristotelian school, we meet with an attempt to classify the different varieties of plants. It was inevitable that the writers of this school should make such an attempt, since no mind trained in Greek philosophy could be content to leave a science in the condition of a mere chaos of isolated descriptions. At first, the most obvious distinction, that of size, was used as the chief criterion whereby to separate the different groups of the vegetable kingdom. In The History of Plants by Theophristus, we find trees, shrubs, bushes, and herbs treated as definite classes, within which cultivated and wild plants are distinguished. The other distinctions of lower value are made between evergreen and deciduous, fruiting and fruitless, and flowering and flowerless plants. Albertus Magnus, who kept alive in the Middle Ages the spirit of Aristotelian botany, was more advanced than Theophrastus in his method of classification. It is true that he divides the vegetable world into trees, shrubs, undershrubs, bushes, herbs, and fungi, but at the same time he points out that this is an arbitrary scheme, since these groups cannot always be distinguished from one another, and also because the same plants may belong to different classes at different periods of its life. A study of the writings of Albertus reveals the fact that he had in mind, though he did not clearly state it, a much more highly evolved system, which may be diagrammatically represented as follows. The modern equivalents of his different groups are shown in square brackets. Subsection 2 The word tunicate in the above table is used for the plants, which Albertus described as growing ex legenius tunicus. It seems clear from this expression that he realized that there was an anatomical distinction between dichotalodons and monocotalodons. Considering how much Albertus had achieved, it is somewhat curious that Cessilpino, who represented Aristotelian botany in the 16th, as Albertus did in the 13th century, should have produced so inadequate a system as his own contribution to the subject. We owe to him one marked advance, the recognition namely of the importance of the seed. On the whole, however, his classification savers too much of having been thought out in the study, and it suffers by comparison with other systems of about the same period, such as those of De lobel and Bauhin, which were arrived at rather by instinct acting upon observation than by a definite and self-conscious intellectual effort. Cessilpino makes his main distinction on the old Aristotelian plan between trees and shrubs on the one hand and under shrubs and herbs on the other. He defides the first of these groups in two and the second into thirteen classes, depending chiefly on seed and fruit characters. Very few of these classes really represent natural groups, and the chief of all distinctions among flowering plants is that between dichotalodons and monocotalodons, which was foreshadowed by Albertus, is almost lost to sight. When we turn from the botanical philosophers to the herbalists proper, we find an altogether different state of affairs. The Aristotelian botanists were conscious from the beginning of the philosophic necessity for some form of classification. The medical botanists, on the other hand, were only interested in plants as individuals and were driven to classify them merely because some sort of arrangement was necessary for convenience in dealing with a large number of kinds. The first Materia Medica, that of Dioscordes, shows some attempt at order, but the arrangement is seldom at all natural. Occasionally the author groups together plants, which are nearly related, as when he treats of a number of liabates or of umbilifers successively, but this is rare. Pliny was not, strictly speaking, a medical botanist, but at the same time he may be mentioned in this connection since his interest in plants was essentially utilitarian. Like Theophrastus, he begins his account of plants with the trees, but his reason for so doing is profoundly different from that of the Greek writer and illustrates the divergence between what we may call the anthropocentric and the scientific outlook upon the plant world. Theophrastus placed trees at the head of the vegetable kingdom because he considered their organization the highest and most completely expressive of plant nature. Pliny, on the other hand, began with trees because of their great value and importance to man. As an example of his ideas of arrangement, we may mention that he places the Myrtle and Laurel side by side because the Laurel takes a corresponding place in triumphs to that accorded to the Myrtle innovations. Turning to the herbals themselves, we find that the earliest show no trace of a natural grouping, the plants being as a rule arranged alphabetically. This is the case, for instance, in the Latin and German Herbarias, the Ortus sanatitis and their derivatives and even in the herbals of Brunfels and of Fuchs in the 16th century. In box herbal, on the other hand, the plants are grouped as herbs, shrubs, and trees according to the classical scheme. The author evidently made some effort within these classes to arrange them according to their relationships. In the preface to the third edition he writes, quote, I have placed together yet kept distinct all plants which are related and connected or otherwise resemble one another and are compared and have given up the former old rule or arrangement according to the ABC, which is seen in the old herbals. For the arrangement of plants by the ABC occasions much disparity and error, end quote. Although the larger classificatory divisions, as now understood, were not recognized by these early workers, they had at least a dim understanding of the distinction between genera and species. This dates back to Theophrastus, who showed, by grouping together different species of oaks, figs, et cetera, that he had some conception of a genus. We owe to Conrad Gessner the first formulation of the idea that genera should be denoted by substantive names. He was probably the earliest botanist who clearly expounded the distinction between a genus and a species. In one of his letters he writes, and we may hold this for certain that there are scarcely any plants that constitute a genus, which may not be divided into two or more species. The ancients describe one species of gentian, I know of ten or more. Very little of Gessner's botanical work was ever published, and it was left to Fabio Colonna to put before the botanical world the true nature of genera. He held the most enlightened views on the subject, and in 1616 clearly stated in his ekphrasis that genera should not be based on similarities of leaf form since the affinities of plants are indicated not by the leaf, but by the characteristic of the flower, the receptacle, and especially the seed. He brought forward instances to show that previous authors had sometimes placed a plant in the wrong genus, because they only attended to the leaves and ignored the structure of the flower. In the writings of Gaspard Bauhin, at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century, the binary system of nomenclature is used with a high degree of consistency, each species bearing a generic and specific name, though sometimes a third or even a fourth descriptive word is added. Those extra words are not, however, really essential. In the preface to Phytopinax 1596, Bauhin states that for the sake of clearness, he has applied one name to each plant and also added some easily recognizable character. The binomial method was foreshadowed at a very early date in a 15th-century manuscript of the old herbal Serca instants, to which we have referred on page 24. This system prevails to a remarkable extent. When we turn to those general schemes of classification, which were evolved by the herbalists of the 16th century, we are at once struck by the great difference existing between the principles on which these schemes are based and those at which we have arrived at the present day. To classify plants according to their uses and medicinal properties is obviously the first suggestion that arises when the universe is regarded from a simple anthropocentric standpoint. In the Greta Herbal of 1526, we get a ludicrously clear example of this method, applied to the special case of fungi. Fungi ben musherones. There be two manners of them. One manner is deadly and slayeth them that eateth of them and be called toedstools, and the other doth not. This account of the fungi occurs also in the earlier manuscript herbal Serca instants mentioned in the last paragraph. This theory of classification has been shown in more recent times to contain the germ of something more nearly approaching a natural system than one would imagine at first sight. Both Linnaeus and Dejesus have pointed out that related plants have similar properties, and in 1804, A.P. Descendol, in his Essay sur la propété medicale des plants, comparé avec la forme extérieuse et la classification naturelle, carried the argument much further. He showed that in no less than 21 families of flowering plants, the same medicinal properties were found throughout all the members of the order. This is very remarkable when we remember that the state of knowledge at that time was such that Descendol was obliged to dismiss a large number of orders with the words properties unknown. Quite recently the subject of the differentiation of groups of plants according to their chemistry has again come to the fore, and in the future chemical characters will probably be numbered among the recognized criteria for use in elaborating schemes of classification. In the history of botanical classification, the first advance from the purely utilitarian standpoint was marked by the recognition of the fact that the structure and mode of life of the plants themselves are of importance. In the work of writers such as Dauden's and D'Alechon, to take two typical examples, we find the issues curiously confused by the working of three different principles side by side. That is to say, by the simultaneous insistence, one on the habitat, two on the virtues, and three on the structure as affording clues to the systematic position of the plant in question. The herbalist thus erects his scheme on a basis consisting of a confused medley of ecological, medical and morphological principles. An enumeration of the 18 headings of D'Alechon in 1586 described the vegetable kingdom. So far as it was then known, we'll show the perplexities which surrounded the first gropings after a natural system. His headings may be translated as follows. One, of trees which grow wild in the woods. Two, of fruits growing wild in thickets and shrubberies. Three, of trees which are cultivated in pleasure gardens and orchards. Four, of cereals and pulse, and the plants which grow in the field with them. Five, of garden herbs and pot herbs. Six, of umbiliferous plants. Seven, of plants with beautiful flowers. Eight, of fragrant plants. Nine, of plants growing in marshes. Ten, of plants growing in rough, rocky, sandy and sunny places. Eleven, of plants growing in shady, wet, marshy and fertile places. Twelve, of plants growing by the sea and in the sea itself. Thirteen, of climbing plants. Fourteen, of thistles and all spiny and prickly plants. Fifteen, of plants with bulbs and succulent and knotty roots. Sixteen, of cathartic plants. Seventeen, of poisonous plants. Eighteen, of foreign plants. Among these eighteen groups, the only ones which have any pretension to being natural are six umbilifers and fourteen thistles. And these merely approximate roughly to related groups of genera. Among the umbilifers, we meet with achalia and other genera which do not really belong in the order. Whilst with the thistles, there are grouped other spiny plants such as astragalus tragacantha which in a natural system would occupy a place remote from the composites. In spite of the fact that improved systems of classification to which we shall shortly refer, were put forward in the 16th and early 17th centuries, we find that as late as 1640, John Parkinson, in his well-known herbal, divided all the plants then known into seventeen classes or tribes. The sequence in which these classes were placed, having in most cases no meaning at all. A few of his tribes are natural, but many are valueless as an expression of affinities. As an example, we may mention his third class, venomous, sleepy and hurtful plants and their counterpoisons, and his seventeenth, strange and outlandish plants. In Parkinson's classification, we see botany reverting once more to the position of a mere handmaid to medicine. In the first book of Dauden's Pemptades, 1583, the principles of botany are discussed. The old Aristotelian classification into trees, shrubs, undershrubs and herbs is accepted, but with some reservations. The author points out that an individual plant may, owing to cultivation or from some other cause, pass from one class into another. He instances Racinus, which is an herbaceous annual with us, but a tree in other countries. The general scheme of classification, which Dauden's propounded, has much in common with that of Des Alichons, which we have already outlined. Within the larger groups, he shows a stronger perception of natural grouping than appears in his arrangement of the larger classes themselves. He often grouped together genera, which we now regard as members of the same natural order, and species which we now look upon as belonging to a single genus. For instance, he brought together genera belonging respectively to the gerinicaceae, hyperinicaceae, plantagenicaceae, cruciferae, compositeae, etc. In some cases, however, he was only partially successful as in the umbelephare, among which he described nigella, love in a mist, and a couple of saxophrages. This example shows how little stress was laid on the flowers and fruit at this time from the point of view of classification. The general habit and the shape of the leaves were the features that received the most attention. Resemblances and differences between the forms of the leaves alone must naturally appear to the botanist of the present day to be a very inadequate basis for a general system of classification. Nevertheless, Matthias de Lobel worked out a scheme on these lines which had great merit and was a considerable advance on previous efforts. He put forward his system in his Sterpium adversaria, 1570-71, and used it also in his later work. It was thus published much earlier than the very primitive schemes of Dealechon and Dodens to which we have just referred. The best point of his system is that, by reason of their characteristic differences of leaf structure, he distinguishes the classes now known to us as monocotalodons and dichotalodons. He introduces a useful feature in the shape of a synoptic table of species which precedes each more or less natural group of plants. The superiority of his classification to the other arrangements in the field at the time was immediately realized. We have evidence of this in the fact that, after his Crudet Bach was published, Plantin brought out an album of the wood engravings used in the book, which, although they had also appeared as illustrations to the works of Dodens and Dealechus, were now arranged as in the scheme put forward by Dealebel, according to their genus and mutual relationship. There seems little doubt that Dealebel made a more conscious effort than any of his predecessors to arrive at a natural classification, and that he realized that such a classification would reveal a unity in all living beings. In his preface to Sturpeum adversaria nova, of 1570 he writes, For thus in an order than which nothing more beautiful exists in the heavens or in the mind of a wise man, things which are far and widely different become, as it were, one thing. Dealebel's scheme is not expressed in the clear manner to which we have become accustomed in more modern systems, because, in common with other botanists of his time, he did not as a rule give names to the groups which we now call orders, or draw any sharp line of his station between them. Dealebel's arrangement, in spite of its good features, had serious drawbacks. The anomalous monocotalodons, such as Arun, Tammus, Allo, and Ruscus, are scattered among the dichotalodons, while Drosera, the sundew, appears among the ferns, and so on. Similarities of leaf form, which are now regarded merely as instances of homoplastic convergence, are responsible for many curious groupings. For instance, in the Crudobock we find the Twayblade, Listerra, the May Lily, Myantheum, and the Plantain, Plontago, described in succession, while in another part of the book various clovers, trifolium, wood sorrel, oxalis, and anemone, hepatica, are grouped together. It is also not surprising that the Marsh Marigold, Caltha, the Water Lilies, Nymphea, and Nufar, the Mantheum, and Frogbit, Hydrocharis, should follow one another, or that Delobel should have brought together the Broom Rape or Obonchi, the Toothwort, Lathrora, the Bird's Nest Orchid, Neosia, and a large number of fungi. In this latter instance, the author has really arrived at genuine biological, though not morphological, groups. He has recognized, on the one hand, the marked uniformity of the type of leaf characteristic of swimming water plants, and on the other hand, he has observed the leaflessness and absence of green color, which are negative features common to so many sacrifice and parasites. The perception of natural affinities among plants, which in the 16th and 17th centuries was gradually, in a dim, instinctive fashion, arising in men's minds, is perhaps best expressed in the work of Gaspard Bauhin, especially in his Pinox Theatri Botanici, 1623. This work is divided into twelve books, each book being further subdivided into sections, comprehending a variable number of genera. Neither the books nor the sections have as a rule any general heading, but there are certain exceptions. For instance, book two is called De Bulbosis, and a section of book four, including 18 genera, is headed Umbilifere. Some of the sections represent truly natural groups. Book three, section six, for example, consists of ten genera of composite, while book three, section two, includes six crucifers. Other sections contain plants of more than one family, yet show a distinct feeling for relationship. For instance, book five, section one, includes Solanum, Mandragora, Hyoschaemus, Nicotiana, Papaver, Hypecum, and Argemon, that is to say four genera from the Solancha followed by three from Papaverica. The common character, which brings them together here, is no doubt their narcotic property. But although no definite line was drawn between the plants belonging to these two widely sundered families, the order in which they are described shows that their distinctness was recognized. Some of Bauhin's other groups, however, which, like that just discussed, are distinguished by their properties, or in other words by their chemical features, have no pretension to naturalness from a morphological standpoint. This is the case with the group described in book eleven, section three, under the name of Aromata, which consists of a heterogeneous assemblage of genera belonging to different orders, which are only connected by the fact that they all yield spices useful to man. There is no doubt that on the whole, Bauhin was markedly successful in recognizing affinities within small cycles, but he broke down on the broader question of the relationships between the groups of genera so constituted. This is, however, hardly surprising when we remember how much difference of opinion exists among systematic botanists, even today, upon the subject of the relations of the orders to one another. Like De La Belle, Bauhin seems to have believed in the general principle of a progression from the simpler to the more highly developed forms. His application of this principle led him to begin with the grasses and to conclude with the trees. The question as to which groups among the flowering plants, angiosperms, are to be considered as relatively primitive is still at the present day an open one, but it would be generally conceded that Bauhin's arrangement cannot be accepted. There is little doubt from the standpoint of modern botany that the grasses are a highly specialized group while the tree habit has been adopted independently by many plants, belonging to entirely different cycles of affinity, and thus, except in rare cases, it cannot be used as a criterion of relationship. On the subject of the relations of the cryptogames, flowerless plants, to the fenerogams, flowering plants, Bauhin had evidently no clear ideas, but such could hardly be hoped for in the state of knowledge of that time. We find, for instance, the ferns, mosses, corals, fungi, algae, the sundew, etc., sandwiched between some leguminose and a section consisting chiefly of thistles. The classification put forward by the Bohemian botanist, Zaluzianski, in 1592, although in its general features no better than that of Dodens or of de Alechon, and certainly less satisfactory than that of de Lobel or the later scheme of Bauhin, is an improvement on all of these in one particular, namely that he begins with the fungi and deals next with the mosses. After the mosses, he describes the grasses and his classification concludes with the trees. He was thus evidently attempting to pass from the simpler to the more complex, and his arrangement indicates that, unlike certain other botanists of his time, he looked upon the lower cryptogames as comparatively simple and primitive plants. He was not so clear-sighted, however, on the subject of the ferns, for he placed them with the umbilifere and some composite, no doubt because he was influenced by the form of the leaf. It is curious that Cecil Pino, who, as we have pointed out, had arrived at the very important principle that the seed and fruit characters were of major value in classification, yet put forward a system which was distinctly inferior to that of guest-powered Bauhin, although the latter appears to have been guided by no such general principles. Probably the reason for this is to be sought in the fact that no system of classification can represent natural affinities unless it takes into account the nature of the plant as a whole. It is true that, compared with the characters of the reproductive organs, the leaf form and habit owing to their plasticity have to be used with great discretion as systematic criteria, but nevertheless no system of classification can afford to ignore them entirely. Cecil Pino based his scheme too exclusively upon seed characters to then neglect even of the structure of the flower, and curiously enough, although he laid so much stress upon the nature of the seed, he did not grasp the fundamental distinction between the embryos of the monocatalidons and the dichatalidons due to the possession of one and two seed leaves, respectively. The chief drawback of his scheme, however, was his failure to realize that living organisms are too complex to fall into a classification based on any one feature. Important as that feature may prove to be when used in conjunction with other characters. Those herbalists, on the other hand, who attacked the problem of classification of plants without any preconceived academic theory, depended, one might almost say, on the glimmerings of common sense for the recognition of affinities. This was no doubt a dim and fitful illumination, but it was at least less partial than the narrow limelight beam of a rigid theory. End of Chapter 6 Section 13 of Herbal's Their Origin and Evolution. A Chapter in the History of Botany. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Kay Hand. Herbal's Their Origin and Evolution. A Chapter in the History of Botany by Agnes Arbor. 7. The Evolution of the Art of Botanical Illustration. In the Art of Botanical Illustration, evolution was by no means a simple and straightforward process. We do not find in Europe a steady advance from early illustrations of poor quality to later ones of a finer character. On the contrary, among the earliest extant drawings of a definitely botanical intention, we meet with wonderfully good figures, free from such features as would be now generally regarding as archaic. The famous Vienna manuscript of Dioscorides, C pages 8 and 85, is a remarkable example of the excellence of some of the very early work. It dates back to the end of the 5th or the beginning of the 6th century of the Christian era. It is illustrated with brush drawings on a large scale, which in many cases are notably naturalistic and quite often modern in appearance. The general habits of the plant is admirably expressed, and occasionally, as in the case of the bean, the characters of the flowers and seed vessels are well indicated. In this drawing also, the leaves are effectively foreshortened. There are a number of other manuscript herbals in existence illustrated with interesting figures. The library of the University of Leiden possesses a particularly fine example, which is ascribed to the 7th century AD. This work contains colored drawings of exceptional beauty, which are smaller than those in the Vienna manuscript but quite equally realistic. It is however with the history of botanical figures since the invention of the printing press that we are here more especially concerned. From this epic onward, the history of botanical illustration is intimately bound up with the history of wood engraving until at the extreme end of the 16th century, engraving on metal first came into use to illustrate herbals. During the 17th century, metal engravings and woodcuts existed side by side, but wood engraving gradually declined and was in great measure superseded by engraving on metal. The finest period of plant illustration was during the 16th century when wood engraving was at its zenith. Botanical wood engravings may be regarded as belonging to two schools, but it should be understood that the distinction between them is somewhat arbitrary and must not be pressed very far. One of these may perhaps be regarded as representing the last decadent expression of that school of late classical art, which a thousand years earlier had given rise to the drawings in the Vienna manuscript. Probably no original woodcuts of this school were produced after the close of the 15th century. In the second phase, on the other hand, which culminated artistically, if not scientifically, in the 16th century, we find a renaissance of the art due to a more direct study of nature. The first school of which we may take the cuts in the Roman edition of the Herbarium of Apelius Platonicus, 1484? As typical examples has, as Dr. Payne has pointed out, certain very well-marked characteristics. The figures of the plants which occupy square or all-blong spaces are very formal and are often represented with complete bilateral symmetry. They show no sign of having been drawn directly from nature, but look as if they were founded on previous work. They have a decorative rather than a naturalistic appearance. It seems indeed as if the principle of decorative symmetry controlled the artist almost against his will. These drawings are somewhat of the nature of diagrams by a draftsman who generalized his knowledge of the object. In Dr. Payne's own words, such figures passing through the hands of a hundred copyists became more and more conventional until they reached their last and most degraded form in the rude cuts of the Roman Herbarium, which represent not the infancy, but the old age of art. Uncouth as they are, we may regard them with some respect, both as being the images of flowers that bloomed many centuries ago and also as the last ripple of the receding tide of classical art. The illustrations of the Herbarium of Apelius were copied from pre-existing manuscripts and the age of the originals is no doubt much greater than that of the printed work. Those here reproduced are taken from a copy in the British Museum in which the pictures were colored, probably at the time when the book was published. Coloring of the figures was characteristic of many of the earliest works in which wood engraving was employed. In cases where uncolored copies of such books exist, there are often blank spaces in the woodcuts which were left in order that certain details might afterwards be added in color. The origin of wood engraving is closely connected with the earlier history of playing card manufacture. Playing cards were at first colored by means of stencil plates and at the same method very naturally came to be employed a connection with the wood blocks used for book illustration. The engravings in the Herbarium of Apelius are executed in black in very crude outline. At least two colors, now much faded, were also employed by means of stenciling. The work was coarsely done and the colors only register very roughly. Brown appears to have been used for the animals, roots, and flowers and green for the leaves. The drawings show some rather curious mannerisms. For instance, in the first cut labeled Photonia, each of the Lancelot leaves is outlined continuously on the one side but with a broken line on the other. It has been suggested that the illustrations in the Herbarium are possibly not wood engravings but rootcuts in metal excavated after the manner of a wood block. We have already referred to the imaginative portrait of the Mandrake. Figures of the animals whose bites or stings were supposed to be cured by the use of a particular herb were often introduced into the drawing as in the case of the plantain which is accompanied by a serpent and a scorpion. In this figure, the cross hatching of white lines on black, the simplest possible device from the point of view of the wood engraver, is employed with good effect. Sometimes the essential character of the plant is seized but the way in which it is expressed is curiously lacking in a sense of proportion as in the case of Draconte, one of the Arum family. The figures in the Herbarium are characterized by an excellent trait which is common to most of the older herbals namely the habit of portraying the plant as a whole including its roots. This came about naturally because the root was often of special value from the druggist's point of view. It is to be regretted that in modern botanical drawings the recognition of the paramount importance of the flower and fruit in classification has led to a comparative neglect of the organs of vegetation especially those which exist underground. We now come to a series of illustrations which may be regarded as occupying an intermediate position between the classical tradition of the Herbarium of Apuleus and the renaissance of botanical drawing which took place early in the 16th century. These include the illustrations to the Book of Nature and to the Latin and German Herbarias, the Ortus Sanitatis and their derivatives which were discussed in chapters 2 and 3. Das Puch der Natur of Conrad von Meggenberg occupies a unique position in the history of botany for it is the first work in which a woodcut representing plants was used with the definite intention of illustrating the text and not merely for a decorative purpose. It was first printed in Augsburg in 1475 and is thus several years older than the earliest printed edition of the Herbarium of Apuleus Platonicus which we have just discussed. The single-plants drawing which illustrates it is probably not of such great antiquity however as those of the Herbarium for its appearance suggests that it was probably executed from nature for this book and not copied and recopied from one manuscript to another before it was engraved. The illustration in question is a full-page woodcut showing a number of plants growing in situ. Several species, example, Renucleus acris, the Meadowbuttocup, Viola audurata, the sweet violet and Convalaria majales, the lily of the valley, are distinctly recognizable. There is noticeable that in two cases in which a rosette of radical leaves is represented, the center of the rosette is filled in in black upon which the leaf stalks appear in white. This use of the black background which gives a rich and solid effect was carried much further in later books such as the Ortus sanatates. A woodcut somewhat similar in style to that just described but more primitive occurs in Travisa's version of the Medieval Encyclopedia of Bartolomeus Angelicus which was printed by Winkendeword before the end of the 15th century. It is probably the first botanical figure illustrating an English book. The illustrations to the Latin herbarias or herbarias Maguntinus published at Maines in 1484 form the next group of botanical woodcuts. The figures are much better than those of the herbarium of Apelius but at the same time they are as a rule formal and conventional and often quite unrecognizable. The want of realism is very conspicuous in such a drawing as that of the lily in which the leaves are represented as if they had no organic continuity with the stem. Some of the figures are wonderfully charming and in their decorative effect recall the plant designs so often used in the Middle Ages to enrich the borders of illuminated manuscripts. This is particularly noticeable in the case of the Breani. The conventional form of tendril here employed is also seen in other early work such as the roof painting of a vine in the Chapel of St. Andrew, Canterbury Cathedral and some decorated stained glass at Wells both of which are considerably earlier in date than the herbarias Maguntinus. A more interesting series of figures also illustrating the text of the Latin herbarias was published in Italy a little later. The woodcuts are believed to be mostly derived from German originals. Text figures 6, 57, 65, 74, 75 and 76 are taken from a Venetian edition of 1499. These drawings are more ambitious than those in the original Greek issue and on the whole the results are more naturalistic. The fern called capillus venaris which is probably intended for the maiden hair is represented hanging from rocks over water just as it does in Devonshire caves today. Another delightful woodcut almost in the Japanese style is that of an iris growing in the margin of a stream from which a graceful bird is drinking. In the very symmetrical drawing of the peony there is an attempt to represent the tuberous roots which are indicated in solid black. The no less symmetrical water lily is remarkable for its rhizome on which the scars of the leaf bases are faithfully represented. This drawing is of interest also on account of its frank disregard of proportion. The flower stalks are drawn not more than twice as long as the breadth of the leaf. We may, I think, safely conclude that the draftsman knew quite well that he was not representing the plant as it was and that he intentionally gave a conventional rendering which did not profess to be more than an indication of certain distinctive features of the plant. This attitude of the artist to his work which is so different from that of the scientific draftsman of the present day is seen with great clearness in many of the drawings in medieval manuscripts. For instance, a plant such as the house leak may be represented growing on the roof of a house the plant being about three times the size of the building. No one would imagine that the artist was under the delusion that these proportions held a good in nature. The little house was merely introduced in order to convey graphic information as to the habitat of the plant concerned and the scale on which it was depicted was simply a matter of convenience. Before an art can be appreciated its conventions must be accepted. It would be as observed to quarrel with the illustrations we have just described on account of their lack of proportion as to condemn grand opera because in real life men and women do not converse in song. The idea of naturalistic drawings in which the size of the parts should be shown in their true relations was of comparatively late growth. In 1485, the year following the first appearance of the Latin herbarious the very important work known as the German herbarious or herbarious zu Tuitsch made its appearance at Mainz. As we pointed out in chapter 2 its illustrations which are executed on a large scale are often of remarkable beauty. Dr. Paine considered some of them comparable to those of Brun Fels in Fidelity of Drawing the very inferior in wood cutting. They are distinctly more realistic than even those of the Venetian edition of the Latin herbarious to which we have just referred. It is interesting for instance to compare the drawings of the daughter in the two works. Other excellent drawings are those of the winter cherry, iris, lily, chicory, comfy, and peony. A pirated second edition of the herbarious zu Tuitsch appeared at Oxford only a few months after the publication of the first at Mainz. The figures which are roughly copied from those of the original edition are very inferior to them. In fact the Mainz woodcuts of 1485 excelled those of all subsequent issues. In the Ortu Sanatates of 1491 about two thirds of the drawings of plants are copied from the herbarious zu Tuitsch. They are often much spoiled in the process and it is evident that the copyist frequently failed to grasp the intention of the original artist. The woodcut of the daughter for instance is lamentably inferior to that in the herbarious zu Tuitsch. There is often a tendency in the later work to make the figures occupy the space in a more decorative fashion. For instance where the stalk in the original drawing is simply cut across obliquely at the base we find in the Ortu Sanatates that its pointed end is continued into a conventional flourish. Among the original figures many as we have already indicated represent purely mythical subjects. The use of a black background against which the stalks and leaves form a contrast in white which we noticed in the Book of Nature is carried further in the Ortu Sanatates. This is shown particularly well in the Tree of Paradise and also in text figures 10 and 81. No consistent method is followed in the course shading which is employed. In some cases there seems to have been an attempt at the convention used so successfully by the Japanese of darkening the underside of the leaf but sometimes in the same figure certain leaves are treated in this way and others not. In some of the genres pictures Noah's arc trees are introduced with crowns consisting entirely of parallel horizontal lines decreasing in length from below upwards so as to give a triangular form. An addition of the Ortu Sanatates which was published in Venice in 1511 is illustrated in great part with woodcuts based on the original figures. They have however a very different appearance since a great deal of shading is introduced and in some cases parallel lines are laid with considerable dexterity. The Greta airball and a number of works of the early 16th century derived from their Baris zu Toitsch, the Ortu Sanatates and similar sources are of no importance in the history of botanical illustration since scarcely any of their figures are original. The oft-repeated set of woodcuts ultimately derived from the Arbarias zu Toitsch were also used to illustrate Hieronymus Braunschweig's distillation book Weber, Dayart, Distellante, Dei, Simplicibus 1500 that the conventional figures of the period did not satisfy the botanist is shown by some interesting remarks by Hieronymus at the conclusion of his work. He tells the reader that he must attend to the text rather than the figures quote, for the figures are nothing more than a feast for the eyes and for the information of those who cannot read or write, end quote. During the first three decades of the 16th century the art of botanical illustration was practically in abeyance in Europe. Such books as were published were chiefly supplied with mere copies of folder woodcuts. But in 1530 an entirely new era was inaugurated with the appearance of Braunschweig's great work, the Arbarum vivi iconis in which a number of plants native to Germany or commonly cultivated there were drawn with a beauty and fidelity which have rarely been surpassed. It is interesting to recall that the date 1530 is often taken in the study of other arts, for example stained glass as the limit of the Gothic period ends the beginning of the Renaissance. Brogfeld's illustrations represent a notable advance on any previous botanical woodcuts so much so indeed that the suddenness of the improvement seems to call for some special explanation. On taking a broader view of the subject we find that at the beginning of the 16th century there was a market advance in all the branches of book illustration and not merely in the botanical side with which we are here concerned. This impetus seems to have been due to the fact that many of the best artists, above all Albrecht Dürer began at that period to draw four wood engraving, whereas in the 15th century the ablest men had shown a tendency to despise the craft and to hold aloof from it. The engravings in Brogfeld's herbal and the fine books which succeeded should not be considered as if they were an isolated manifestation but should be viewed in relation to other contemporary and even earlier planned drawings which were not intended for book illustrations. Some of the most remarkable are those by Albrecht Dürer which were produced before the appearance of Brogfeld's herbal during the first 30 years of the 16th century. In each of his colored drawings of sides of turf known as Das Gross Rassenstück and Das Kleine Rassenstück a tangled group of growing plants is portrayed exactly as it occurred in nature with a marvelous combination of artistic charm and scientific accuracy. Professor Kilerman has been at pains to identify the genus and species of almost every plant represented and has described the drawings as Das erst dankmal der Flanzenkologie. In 1526 Dürer carried out a beautiful series of planned drawings among the most famous of which are those of the Columbine and the Greater Selendine. The former is reproduced on a small scale in plate 17. It is scarcely possible to imagine a more perfect habit drawing of a plant. In Italy Leonardo da Vinci's exquisite study of plants of which plate 18 is an example must also have pointed the way to a better era of herbal illustration and whose work the artistic interest predominates over the botanical to a greater extent than is the case with Dürer's drawing. It is strange to think that numerous editions of the Ortus Sanitatis and similar books with their crude and primitive woodcuts should have been published while such an artist as Leonardo da Vinci was at the zenith of his powers. If internal evidence alone were available it might plausibly be maintained that the engravings in the Ortus Sanitatis and the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci were centuries apart. They are thus led to the conclusion that though the engravings in Brunfels' herbal are separated from previous botanical figures by an almost impassable gulf they should not be regarded as a sudden and inexplicable development. The art of naturalistic plant drawing had arrived independently at what was perhaps its high water mark of excellence but it is in Brunfels' great work that we find it for the first time applied to the illustration of a botanical book. The illustrations in Brunfels' herbal were engraved and probably drawn also by Hans Weiditz or Guditus some of whose work has been ascribed to Albrecht Dürer. The title Erbarum Vive Icones Living Pictures of Plants indicates the most distinctive feature of the book namely that the artist went direct to nature instead of regarding the plant world through the eyes of the previous draftsman. This characteristic is best appreciated on comparing Brunfels' figures with those of his predecessors. This picture of the water lily, for example, contrasts notably with that of the same subject from the Venetian Erbarius. When the former, the artist has caught the exact look of the leaves and stalks buoyed up by the water. Throughout the work the drawing seems to be of a slightly higher quality than the actual engraving. The lines are, to use the technical term, occasionally somewhat rotten or even broken. In one respect the outcome reaction from the conventional and generalized early drawings went almost too far. Many of Brunfels' woodcuts were done from imperfect specimens in which, for example, the leaves had withered or had been damaged by insects. This is clearly shown in text figure 84. The artist's ambition was evidently limited to representing the specimen he had before him whether it was typical or not. The notion had not then been grasped that the ideal botanical drawing avoids the peculiarities of any individual specimen and seeks to portray the characters really typical of the species. These characters can sometimes only be arrived at by comparison of numerous specimen. From the figures he reproduced a good idea of the style of videts can be obtained. His line is usually firm and broad and but little shading is employed. The chief merit of the drawings lies in their crisp and virile outlines. Regarded from the point of view of decorative book illustration, the beautiful drawings of the period under construction sometimes failed to reach the standard set by earlier work. The very strong black velvety line of many of the 15th century wood engravings and the occasional use of solid black backgrounds give a great sense of richness, especially in combination with a black letter type with which they harmonize so admirably. A page bearing such illustrations is often more satisfying to the eye than one in which the desire to express the subtleties of plant form in realistic fashion led to the use of a more delicate line. However, the primary object of the herbal illustrations was, after all, a scientific and not a decorative one and from this point of view the gain in realism more than compensates for the loss in the harmonious balance of black and white. Our chronological survey of the chief botanical woodcuts brings us next to those published by Eganolf in 1533 to illustrate Rodion's cruder book. These have sometimes been regarded as of considerable importance, almost comparable in fact with those of Brunfels. A careful examination of these wood engravings leads, however, to the conclusion that practically all the chief figures in Eganolf's book have been copied from those of Brunfels, but on a smaller scale and reversed. It is true that the style of engraving is different and that, as Hatten has pointed out Eganolf's flowing, easy, almost brush-like line is very distinct from that of Vititz, but the fact of the plagiarism remains. The two figures here reproduced, the lesser Selendine and the heart's tongue fern, are reduced copies from Brunfels. It is interesting to notice that as the third part of Brunfels great work had not appeared when Eganolf's book was published, the latter must have been at a loss for figures of the plants which Brunfels had reserved for his third volume. We find that in the case of one such plant, the Asparagus, he solved the problem by going back to the old familiar woodcut which had done duty in the Ortu's Sanatates and the Hervarius Zutwich. In the third volume of Brunfels' herbal, which appeared after his death, there is a small figure, that of Ericula Murus, which differs conspicuously in style from the other engravings and which appears to represent a case in which the tables were turned and a figure was borrowed from Eganolf. In his later books, Eganolf used woodcuts pirated from those of Fuchs and Bach, which we must now consider. In the work of Leonhard Fuchs' front piece, plant drawing as an art may be said to have reached its culminating point. It is true that, at a later period when the botanical importance of the detailed structure of the flower and fruit was recognized, figures were produced which conveyed exacter and more copious information on these points than did those of Fuchs. Nevertheless, at least in opinion of the present writer, the illustration to Fuchs' herbals, De Historia stirrpium, 1542, and New Crater book, 1543, represents the high watermark of that type of botanical drawing which seeks to express the individual character and habit of each species, treating the plant broadly as a whole and outlaying more stress upon the reproductive than the vegetative organs. Fuchs' figures are on so large a scale that the plant frequently had to be represented as curved in order to fit it into the folio cage. The illustrations here reproduced do not give an entirely just idea of their beauty since the line employed in the original is so thin that it is ill adapted to the reduction necessary here. If the drawings have any fault, it is perhaps to be found in the somewhat blank and unfinished look occasionally produced when unshaded line drawings are used on so large a scale. This is the case for instance in the figure of the aloe. It may be that Fuchs had in mind the possibility that the purchaser may wish to color the work and to fill in a certain amount of detail for himself. The existing copies of this and other old herbals often have the figures painted, generally in a distressingly crude and heavy fashion. The coloring in many cases appears to have been done at a very early date. In the Octavo edition of Fuchs Herbal published in 1545, small versions of the large woodcuts appeared. It is perhaps invidious to draw distinctions between the work of Fuchs and that of Brunfels since they are both of such exquisite quality. However, merely as an expression of personal opinion, the present writer must confess to feeling that there is a finer sense of power and freedom of handling about the illustrations in Fuchs Herbal than those of Brunfels. Sometimes in Fuchs figures a wonderfully decorative spirit is shown, as in the case of the earthnut pea, which fills the rectangular space almost in the manner of an all over wallpaper pattern. It must not be forgotten when discussing woodcuts that the artist who drew upon the block for the engraver was working under peculiar conditions. It was impossible for him to be unmindful of the boundaries of the block when these took form as it were of miniature precipices under his hand. These boundaries marked out the exact limit of space which the figure could occupy. It is not surprising under these circumstances that the artist who drew upon the block should often seem to have been obsessed by its rectangularity and should have accommodated his drawing to its form in a way that was unnecessary and far from realistic, though sometimes very decorative. This is exemplified in the figure of the earthnut pea to which we have just referred to and also in text figures 41, 44, 62, 95, 101, etc. The writer has been told by an artist accustomed in former years to draw upon the wood for the engraver that to avoid a rectangular effect required as a distinct effort of will. At the present day, when photographic methods of reproduction are almost exclusively used, the artist is no longer oppressively conscious of the exact outline of the space which his figure will occupy. The figures here reproduced show how great a variety of subjects were successfully dealt with in Fuchs' work. The cabbage is realized in a way that brings home to us the intrinsic beauty of this somewhat prosaic subject. In the wild areum, the fruit and a dissection of the inflorescence are represented so that botanically the drawing reaches a high level. Fuchs woodcuts are nearly all original, but that of the white water lily appears to have been founded upon Brun Fells' figure. We have so far spoken for the sake of brevity as if Fuchs actually executed the figures himself. This however was not the case. He employed two draftsmen, Heinrich von Maurer, who drew the plants for major, and Albrecht Meyer who copied the drawings onto the wood, and also an engraver, Wiet, Rudolf Speckle, who actually cut the blocks. Fuchs evidently delighted to honor his colleagues, for at the end of the book there are portraits of all three at work. The artist is drawing a plant with a brush fixed in a quill. The drawing and painting of flowers sometimes dismissed almost contemptuously, as though it were a humble art in which an inferior artist, incapable of the more exacting work of drawing from the life, might be able to excel. The falsity of this view is shown by the fact that the greatest of flower painters have generally been men who also did admirable figure work. Bantin Latour is a striking modern instance, and one has but to glance at the studies of Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Durer who find his plant drawings can only be produced by a master hand, capable of achieving success on more ambitious lines. The wood engravings in Fuchs' herbal are a case in point. The portraits, which also illustrate the book, show that the talents of the artist whom he employed were not confined to plant drawing, but were also strong in the direction of vigorous and abled portraiture. Fuchs' gratitude to his assistants is expressed in the preface to De Historia Steupium where he makes some remarks upon the illustrations which may be translated as flowers. As far as concerns the pictures themselves each of which is positively delineated according to the features and likeness of the living plants, we have taken peculiar care that they should be most perfect, and moreover, we have devoted the greatest diligence to secure that every plant should be depicted with its own roots, stalks, leaves, flowers, seeds, and fruits. Furthermore, we have purposely and deliberately avoided the obliteration of the natural form of a plant by shadows and other less necessary things, by which the delineators sometimes try to win artistic glory. And we have not allowed the craftsmen so to indulge their whims as to cause the drawings not to correspond accurately to the truth. Fuchs' Lodufol's Specklen, by far the best engraver of Strasburg, has admirably copied the wonderful industry of the draftsmen. It has with such excellent craft expressed in his engraving the features of each drawing that he seems to have contended with the draftsmen for glory and victory. How dull and colorless the phrases of modern science and writers appear beside the hot-blooded, erudite enthusiasm of the 16th century. Fuchs' Woodcuts were extensively pirated, especially those on a reduced scale, which were published in his edition of 1545. As we have mentioned on page 55, Peronimus Bach, or Trages, undoubtedly made use of them in the second edition of his cruder book, which was the next important illustrated botanical work to appear after Fuchs' herbal. An examination of the woodcuts in Bach's herbal scenes, however, to show that his illustrations have more claim to originality than is often supposed. The figures of Wintergreen, Moonwort, and Strawberry here reproduced are markedly different from those of Fuchs, although in the case of the first Fuchs' Woodcut may have been used to some extent. The artist employed by Bach, as he himself tells us, was David Kandel, a young lad, the son of a burger of Strasburg. His drawings are often of interest, apart from their botanical aspect. For instance, the picture of an oak tree includes, appropriately enough, a swineherd with a swine, the chestnut tree gives occasion for a hedgehog, and in another case, a monkey and several rabbits are introduced, one of the latter holding a shield bearing the artist's initials. The Woodcut of Trappa, the bullnut, is a highly imaginative production, which clearly shows that neither the artist nor the author had ever seen the plant in question. In general character, Bach's illustrations are neater and more conventional than those of Brunfels or Fuchs. The crowns of the trees are often made practically square so as to fit the block. The figures in earlier works, such as the Ortu's Sunny Tatis, are recalling Kandel's disregard of the proportion between the size of the tree and that of the leaves and fruits. In point of time, the illustrations to the early editions of Matteoli's commentaries on the six books of Dio Scorides follow fairly closely on those of Fuchs, but they are extremely different in style. Details such as the veins and hairs of the leaves are often elaborately worked out while shading is much used, a considerable mastery of parallel lines being shown. The general effect is occasionally somewhat flat-endled. Some of the drawings suggest that they may have been done from dried plants and in others the treatment is overcrowded, but in spite of these defects, they form a markedly individual contribution which is of great importance in the history of botanical illustration. Numerous editions of Matteoli's work appeared in various languages. In its earlier form, the book had only small figures, but in some later editions, notably that which appeared in Venice in 1565, there are large illustrations which are reproduced on a reduced scale in the next figures 43, 44, 95. These woodcuts resemble the smaller ones in character, but are more decorative in effect and often remarkably fine. Whereas in the work of Brunfeld and Fuchs, the beautiful line of a single stock is often the keynote of the whole drawing in the work of Matteoli, the eye most frequently finds its satisfaction in the rich massing of foliage, fruit, and flowers suggestive of southern luxuriance. Many of his figures would require literal modification to form the basis of a tapestry pattern. Another remarkable group of wood engravings consist of those published by Plantin in connection with the work of the three low country herbalists Daudens, Delecule, and De La Belle. In the original edition of Daudens' herbal, Cruyaboch, published by Vanderlo in 1554, more than half the illustrations were taken from Fuchs' October edition of 1545. But eventually as we have pointed out in Chapter 4, Vanderlo parted with Fuchs' blocks. After this, Plantin took over the publication of Daudens' books and in his final collected works, Sterpium Historiae Pemptade's Sex, 1583, the majority of the illustrations were original and were carried out under the author's eye. A few, namely those marked in the Pemptade's ex codice Cesario, are copied from Giuliana Anicia's manuscript of Dioscorides, to which we have more than once referred. Some are also borrowed from the works of De La Plumes and De La Belle, since Plantin was publisher to all three botanists, and the wood blocks engraved for them were regarded as, to some extent, forming a common stock. In fact, it is often difficult to decide to which author any given figure originally belonged. This difficulty is enhanced by the fact that some were actually made for one and then used for another, before the work for which they had been originally destined was published. There is little to be said about De La Belle's figures, which partook of the character of the rest of the woodcuts for which Plantin made himself responsible. The yellow water lily is given here as an example. The woodcuts illustrating the comparatively small books of De La Clus are perhaps the most interesting of the figures associated with this trio of botanists. The Dragon Tree, Sedum Majus, and Job's Tears are examples from his books on the Plants of Spain, which appeared in 1576. The popularity of a large collection of blocks got together by the publishing house of Plantin is shown by the frequency with which they were copied. Dr. B. Dayton Jackson has pointed out that the woodcut of the Climatis, which first appeared in Daudin's Pemptades of 1583, reappears either in identical form or more or less accurately copied in works by De La Belle, De La Clus, Gerard, Parkinson, Jean-Balvin, Chagraeus, and Pettifer. The actual blocks themselves appear to have been used for the last time when Johnson's edition of Gerard's Irrival made its final appearance in London 1636. Another school of plant illustration is represented in the work of Gessner and Camarraeus. As we mentioned on page 92, Gessner's drawings were not published during his lifetime, but some of them were eventually produced by Camarraeus with the addition of figures of his own to illustrate his epitome Mathioli of 1586, and also his later work. In 1751, C. J. True published a collection of Gessner's drawings, many of which had never been seen before, but even then it proved impossible to separate the work of the two botanists with any completeness, since Gessner's drawings and blocks had passed through the hands of Camarraeus, who had incorporated his own with them. A few would cut, however, which appeared as an appendix to similar's life of Gessner are undoubtedly Gessner's own work. One of them is reproduced in text figure 48. Professor Trevoranus, whose work on the use of wood engravings as botanical illustrations is so well known, considered that some of the drawings published by Camarraeus in connection with his last work, Hortus Medicus et Philosophicus 1588 were among the best ever produced. Examples are shown in text figures 34, 35, 71, 100. Trevoranus pointed out that one of their great merits lay in the selection of good, typical specimens as models. These figures are very much more botanical than those of any previous author. In fact, as Hatton has pointed out in the Craftsman's Plant book, they are beginning to become too botanical for the artist. Camarraeus often gives detailed analyses of the flowers and fruit on an large scale. Among the illustrations here were produced will be seen one in which the seedling of the rows of Jericho is drawn side by side with the mature plant and another in which the structure of a germinating date is shown with great clearness. This interest in seedlings gives a modern touch to the work of Camarraeus. A number of wood blocks were cut at Lyon to illustrate de Alechon's work the Historiae Generaleuse Planitarum 1586 and 1687. Many of these figures were taken from the Urbils of Fuchs, Matteoli and Dodens, but they were often embellished with representations of insects, detached leaves and flowers scattered over the block with no apparent object except to fill the space. This peculiarity which is shown in the engraving of Ornithogalum, reproduced in text figure 51, appears also in the illustrations of a book on by Johannes Messua published in Venice in 1581. In certain other woodcuts in de Alechon's herbal, solid black is used in an effective fashion. This is the case for instance in text figure 101, which is also interesting since two of the leaves bear the initials M and H, which were possibly those of the artist. Among less important botanical wood engravings of the 16th century, we may mention those in the works of Belon, such as De Arboribus 1553. In this book there are some graceful woodcuts of trees, one of which is reproduced in text figure 102. The initial letters used in the present volume are taken from another of Belon's books. Some specimens of the quaint little illustrations to Caster Durante's Urbario Nuovo of 1585 are shown in text figures 45, 68 and 103. It is interesting to compare his drawing of the Water Lily with those of the Venetian edition of the Latin Herbarias of 1499, the Greta Airbol, Brunfeld's Herbarium Vivei Icones of 1530 and De La Bel's Prietsbach of 1581. The engravings in Porta's Phytonomonica 1588 and in Prospero Alpino's Little Book on Egyptian Plants 1592 are of good quality. Some curious examples of the former, which will be discussed at greater length in the next chapter, are shown in text figures 109 and 110, and the glass quartz, one of the best woodcuts among the latter, is reproduced in text figure 47. Passing on to the 17th century, we find the Podromos of Gaspar Valkyre 1620 contains a number of original illustrations, but they are not very remarkable, and often have rather the appearance of having been drawn from pressed specimens. To examples of these woodcuts will be found in text figures 49 and 62. The former is interesting as being an early representation of the potato. Parkinson's Paradisous Terrestris of 1629 contains a considerable proportion of original figures besides others borrowed from previous writers. The engravings were made in England by Switzer. They are poor in quality and the innovation of representing a number of species in one large woodcut is not very successful. Text figure 55 shows a twig of Barbary, which is but a single item in one of these large illustrations. Among the still later wood engravings, we may mention the large, rather coarse cuts in Aldrovandi's Dendrologia of 1667, one of which the figure of the orange, or mala arantia chinusnia, is reproduced in text figure 104 on a greatly reduced scale. In the present chapter, no attempt has been made to discuss the illustrations of those herbals, for example the works of Turner, Tiber and Montanos, Gerard, etc., in which most of the woodcuts are copied from previous books. In the majority of such cases, the source of the figures has already been indicated in chapter 4. This brief review of the history of botanical woodcuts leads us to the conclusion that between 1330 and 1630, that is to say during the 100 years when the herbal was at its zenith, the number of sets of wood engravings which were preeminent either on account of their intrinsic qualities or because they were repeatedly copied from book to book, was strictly limited. We might almost say that there were only five collections of woodcuts of plants of really first-rate importance, those namely of Brunfels, Fuchs, Matteoli, and Quentin, with those of Gessner, Camararias, all of which were published in the 16th century between 1530 and 1590. The wood blocks of the two botanists last mentioned cannot be considered apart from one another. From the scientific point of view, they show a market advanced in the introduction of enlarged sketches of the flowers and fruit, in addition to the habit drawings. Plantain's sets included those blocks which were engraved for the herbals of De La Belle, De La Cous, and the later works of Daudetans. At the close of the 16th century, the woodcutting on the continent was distinctly on the Wayne and had begun to be superseded by engraving on metal. The earliest botanical work in which copper etchings were used as illustrations is said to be Fabio Colonna's Faito Bassanos of 1592. These etchings, two of which are shown in text figures 46 and 105, are on a small scale, but are extremely beautiful and accurate. The details of the flowers and fruit are often shown separately. The figures in this respect being comparable with those of Gessner and Camararias, though owing to their small size, they do not convey so much botanical information. In a later book of Colonna's, the Ecfrossis, analyses of the floral parts are given in even greater detail than in the Faito Bassanos. Colonna expressly mentions that he used wild plants as models wherever possible because cultivation is apt to produce alterations in the form. The decorative border surrounding each of the figures reproduced was not printed from the copper. In the 17th century, a large number of botanical books illustrated by means of copper plates were produced. The majority of these were published late in the century and thus scarcely come within our purview. A few of the earlier ones may however be referred to at this point. In 1611, Paul Reignal Mainz's specimen Historiae Panitarum was published in Paris, but though this work was illustrated with good copper plates, the effect was somewhat spoiled by the transparency of the paper. Two years later appeared the Hortus Aestetensis by Basil Bessler, an apothecary of Nuremberg. It is a large work with enormous illustrations, mostly of mediocre quality. In a succeeding year, 1614, a book was published which has been described, probably with justice, as containing some of the best copper plate figures of plants ever produced. This was the Hortus Floridius of Crispian de Passe, a member of a famous family of engravers. Like Parkinson's Paradisus Terrestris into which some of the figures are copied, it is more of the nature of a garden book than an herbal. In 1615, an English edition of Crispian de Passe's work was published at Utrecht under the title of A Garden of Flowers. The plates are the same as those in the original work. The artist is particularly successful with the bulbous and tuborous plants, the cultivation of which has long been such a specialty of Holland. Plate 19 is a characteristic example, but only part of the original picture is here reproduced. The soil on which the plants grow is often shown, and the horizon is placed very low so that they stand up against the sky. This convention seems to have been characteristic not only of the plant drawings of the Dutch artists, but also of their landscapes. In the paintings of Cuyup and Paul Potter, the skyline is sometimes so low that it is seen between the legs of the cows and horses. This treatment was no doubt suggested by life in a flat country, but was carried to such an extreme that the artist's eye level must have been almost on the ground. The purchaser of The Garden of Flowers receives detailed directions for the painting of the figures which he is expected to carry out himself. The book is divided into four parts appropriate to the four seasons, and each part is preceded by an encouraging verse intended to keep alive the owner's enthusiasm for his task. The stanza at the beginning of the last section seems to show some anxiety on the part of the author, lest the reader should have begun to weary over the lengthy occupation of coloring the plates. It reads as follows. If hitherto my friend you have performed the task in hand, with joy received, this last will be the best when all is scanned. As we have already mentioned, it is not our intention to deal with the books published in the latter part of the 17th century. We may, however, for the sake of completeness, mention two or three examples in order to show the kind of work that was then being done. Paolo Bocconi's Icones et Descripziones of 1647 was illustrated with copper plates, some of which were remarkably subtle and delicate, while others were rather carelessly executed. Among slightly later works we may refer to a quaint little Dutch herbal by Stephen Blindkart and to the Paradisus Batavus of Paul Hermann, both of which belong to the last decade of the century. The latter, which is in Elzevir, with very good copper plates, was published after the author's death and dedicated by his widow to Henry Compton Bishop of London. On the plates which illustrate Blindkart's herbal, a landscape and figures are often introduced to form a background, and the low horizon, to which we are referred in speaking of the Hortus Floridus, is a very conspicuous feature. The picture of the winter cherry is here reproduced as an example. As showing the complete revolution in the style of plant illustration in 200 years, it is interesting to compare this drawing with that of the same subject in the German Erbarius of 1485. Let us be confessed that the 15th century woodcut, though far less detailed and painstaking, seizes the general character of the plant in a way that the 17th century copper plate somewhat misses. Etching and engraving on metal are well adapted to very delicate and detailed work, but from the point of view of book illustration, wood engraving is generally more effective. In the latter the lines are raised and the method of printing is thus exactly the same as in the case of type, while in the former the process is reversed and the lines are incised. As a result, there is a harmony about a book illustrated with woodcuts which cannot in the nature of things be attained when such different processes as printing from raised type and from incised metal are brought together in the same volume. Section 14 of Herbal's Their Origin and Evolution A Chapter in the History of Botany 8. The Doctrine of Signatures and Astrological Botany During the preceding chapters we have restricted our discussion to those writings which may be credited with having taken some time to read the book. In the last section of the book, we will be talking about the history of botany. In the last section of the book, we will be talking about the history of botany which may be credited with having taken some part, however slight, in advancing the knowledge of plants. We have as it were confined our attention to the mainstream of botanical progress and its tributaries. But before concluding it may be well to call to mind the existence of more than one backwater connected indeed with the main channel but leading nowhere. The subject of the superstitions with which herb collecting has been hedged about at different periods is far too wide to be dealt with in detail in the present book. We have referred in earlier chapters to the observances with which the Greek herb gatherers surrounded their calling page 7 and the mysterious dangers which are described in the Herbarium of Apollaeus as attending to the uprooting of the Mandrake page 36. There is comparatively little reference to such matters in the works of the German Fathers of Botany or those of the greatest of their successors. Indeed as we have previously mentioned 55 to 58, 103 and 104, Bach's famous Kruder book and William Turner's herbal contain definite refutations of various superstitions. Contemporaneously however with the fine series of herbals of the 16th and 17th centuries there appeared a succession of books about plants which had as their subjects one or both of two topics, the doctrine of signatures and astrological botany. These works cannot be said to have furthered the science to any appreciable text, but they have considerable interests rather on account of the curious light which they throw upon the attitude of mind of their writers, and presumably their readers also, than for many intrinsic merit. One of these authors in his preface speaks of the notions and observations contained in his work, most of which I am confident are true, and if there be any that are not so, yet they are pleasant. The excuse that the notions cherished by the botanical mystics of the 18th and 17th centuries were pleasant even if untrue may perhaps be offered in extenuation of the very brief discussion of their salient points which we propose to undertake in the present chapter. The most famous of those mystical writers who turned their attention to botany was undoubtedly Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus of Hohenheim, better known by the name of Paracelsus 1493 to 1541. His portrait is shown in text figure 108. He was a doctor as his father had been before him, and in 1527 he became a professor at Basel. Here he gave great offense by lecturing in the vulgar tongue, burning the writings of Aphesina and Galen, and interpreting his own works instead of those of the ancients. His disregard of cherished traditions and his personal peculiarities led to difficulties with his colleagues, and he only held his post for a very short time. For the rest of his life he was a wanderer on the face of the earth and he died in comparative poverty at Salzburg in 1541. The character and writings of Paracelsus are full of the strangest contradictions. Browning's poem perhaps gives a better idea of his career than any prose account aiming and historical accuracy. His life was so strange that the imagination of a poet is needed to revitalize it for us today. His almost incredible boastfulness is the main characteristic that everyone remembers, the word bombast being in all probability coined from his name. In one of his works after contemptuously dismissing all the great physicians who had preceded him, Galen, Avicenna and others, he remarks, I shall be the monarch and mine shall the monarchy be. The conclusion that he was something of a quack can hardly be avoided, but at the same time it must be confessed that his writings were occasionally illumined with real scientific insight, and then he infused new life into chemistry and medicine. Paracelsus' actual knowledge of botany appears to have been meager for not more than a couple of dozen plant names are found in his works. To understand his views on the property of plants, it is necessary to turn for a moment to his chemical theories. He regarded sulfur, salt and mercury as the three fundamental principles of all bodies. The sense in which he uses these terms is symbolic and thus differs entirely from that in which they are employed today. Sulfur appears to embody the ideas of change, combustibility, volatilization, and growth. Salt to those of stability and non-inflammability. Mercury to that of fluidity. The virtues of plants depend according to paracelsus upon the proportions in which they contain these three principles. The medicinal properties of plants are thus the outcome of qualities that are not obvious at sight. How then is the physician to be guided in selecting herbal remedies to cure the several ailments of his patients? The answer to this question given by paracelsus is summed up in what is known as the doctrine of signatures. According to this doctrine many medicinal herbs are stamped as it were with some clear indication of their uses. This may perhaps be best understood by means of a quotation from paracelsus himself in the words of a 17th century English translation. Quote, I have oft times declared how by the outward shapes and qualities of things we may know their inward virtues which God hath put in them for the good of man. So in Saint John's warts we may take notice of the form of the leaves and flowers, the porosity of the leaves and veins. One, the porosity or holes in the leaves signify to us that this herb helps both inward and outward holes or cuts in the skin. Two, the flowers of Saint John's warts when they are putrified they are like blood, which teacheth us that this herb is good for wounds to close them and fill them up. It is sometimes held that the real originator of the theory of signatures in any approximation to a scientific form was Jim Batista Porta who was probably born at Naples shortly before the death of paracelsus. He wrote a book about human physiognomy in which he endeavored to find in the bodily form of man indications as to his character and spiritual qualities. This study suggested to him the idea that the inner qualities and the healing powers of the herbs might also be revealed by external signs and thus led to his famous work, the phyto non-mecanonica, which was first published at Naples in 1588. Porta developed his theory in detail and pushed it to great lengths. He supposed for example that long-lived plants would lengthen a man's life while short-lived plants would abbreviate it. He held that herbs with a yellow sap would cure jaundice while those whose surface was rough to the touch would heal those diseases that destroy the natural smoothness of the skin. The resemblance of certain plants to certain animals opened to Porta a vast field of dogmatism on a basis of conjecture. Plants with flowers shaped like butterflies would, he supposed, cure the bites of insects while those whose roots or fruits had a jointed appearance remotely suggested a scorpion must necessarily be sovereign remedies for the sting of that creature. Porta also detected many obscure points of resemblance between the flowers and fruits of certain plants and the limbs and organs of certain animals. In such cases of resemblance he held that an investigation of the temperament of the animal in question would determine what kind of disease the plant was intended to cure. It will be recognized from these examples that the doctrine of signatures was remarkably elastic and was not fettered by any rigid consistency. The illustrations of the phytonomonica are of great interest as interpreting Porta's point of view. The part of a man's body which is healed by a particular herb or the animal whose bites or stings can be cured by it are represented in the same woodcut as the herb. For example, the back view of a human head with a thick crop of hair is introduced into the block with the maiden hair fern which is an ancient specific for baldness. A pomegranate with its seed exposed and a plant of tooth wart with its hard white-scale leaves are represented in the same figure as a set of human teeth. A drawing of a scorpion accompanies some pictures of plants with articulated seed vessels. And an adder's head is introduced below the drawing of the plant known as the adder's tongue. It would serve little purpose to deal in detail with the various exponents of the doctrine of signatures such for example as Johann Popp who in 1625 published a herbal written from this standpoint and containing also some astrological botany. We will only now refer to one of the later champions of the signature of plants, an English herbalist of the 17th century who made the subject peculiarly his own. This was William Cole, a fellow of New College Oxford who lived and botanized at Putney in Surrey. He seems to have been a person of much character and his vigorous arguments would often be very telling were it possible to admit the soundness of his premises. William Cole carried the doctrine of signatures to as extreme a point as can well be imagined. His account of the walnut from his work Adam and Eden 1657 may be quoted as an illustration. Quote, walnuts have the perfect signature of the head. The outer husk or green covering represent the paracranium or outward skin of the skull where on the hair growth and therefore salt made of those husks or barks are exceeding good for wounds in the head. The inner woody shell hath the signature of the skull that covers the kernel of the hard meningia and pyometre which are the thin scarfs that envelop the brain. The kernel hath the very figure of the brain and therefore it is very profitable for the brain and resists poisons. For the kernel be bruised and moistened with the quintessence of wine and laid upon the crown of the head it comforts the brain and head mightily. In Cole's writings we meet with the instances of a curious confusion of thought which characterized the doctrine of signatures. The signature in some cases represents an animal injurious to man and is taken to denote that the plant in question will cure its bites or stings. For instance, that plant that is called atter's tongue because the stulk of it represents one is a sovereign wound herb to cure the biting of an atter. In other cases the signature represents one of the organs of the human body and indicates that the plant will cure diseases of that organ. For example, heart tree foil is so called not only because the leaf is triangular like the heart of a man but also because each leaf contains the perfect icon of a heart and that in its proper color, V's a flesh color it defended the heart against the noisome vapor of the spleen. Cole seems to have possessed a philosophic mind and to have endeavored to follow his theories to their logical conclusion. He was much exercised because a large proportion of the plants with undoubted medicinal virtues have no obvious signatures. He concluded that a certain number were endowed with signatures in order to set man on the right track in his search for herbal remedies. The remainder were purposefully left blank in order to encourage his skill and resource in discovering their properties for himself. A further ingenious argument is that a number of plants are left without signatures because if all were signed, the rarity of it, which is the delight, would be taken away by too much harping upon one string. Our author was evidently a keen and enthusiastic collector of herbs. In his book The Art of Simpling, 1656 he complains bitterly that physicians leave the gathering of herbs to the apothecaries and the latter rely commonly upon the words of the silly Arab women, who many times bring them quid for quo than which nothing can be more sad. Another strong supporter in this country of the doctrine of signatures was the astrological botanist Robert Turner. He definitely states that God hath imprinted upon the plants, herbs, and flowers as it were in hieroglyphics the very signature of their virtues. It is interesting to find that the doctrine of signatures was repudiated by the best of the 16th century herbalists. Dodens, for instance, wrote in 1583 that the doctrine of the signatures of plants has received the authority of no ancient writer who is held in any esteem. Moreover, it is so changeable and uncertain that as far as science or learning is concerned, it seems absolutely unworthy of acceptance. A later writer, Guy de la Brosse, criticized the theory very acutely, pointing out that it was quite easy to imagine any resemblance between a plant and animal that happened to be convenient. C'est comme des nuits, he writes, qui l'ont fait ressemblant à tout, c'est que la fantasie s'est représentée à une grue, à une grue nuit, à une homme, à une armée, et à autre semblables visions. Both Paracelsus and Porta deprecate the use of foreign drugs on the ground that in the country where a disease arises, their nature produces means to overcome it. This idea is one which constantly recurs in the herbals. In 1664, Robert Turner wrote, for what climate so ever is subject to any particular disease, in the same place there grows a cure. There is ample evidence of the survival of this theory even in the 19th century. For instance, in the preface to Thomas Green's universal herbal of 1816, we find the remark, nature has in this country as well as in all others provided, in the herbs of its own growth, the remedies for the several diseases to which it is most subject. The notion persists indeed to the present day. There is a widespread belief among children, for example, that docks always grow in the neighborhood of stinging nettles in order to provide a cure in C2. Whether this view contains any grain of truth or not, it certainly deserves our gratitude since it led to Dr. McLaughlin's discovery of salicin as a cure for rheumatic favor. On the ground that in the case of malarial diseases, the poisons which cause them and the remedy which cures them are naturally produced under similar climactic conditions, McLaughlin sought and found in the bark of the willow, which inhabits low lying damp situations, this drug which has proved so valuable in the treatment of rheumatism. The doctrine of signatures is not the only piece of botanical mysticism associated with the name of Paracelsius. He is also a firm believer in the influence of the heavenly bodies upon the vegetable world, or in other words in botanical astrology. He considered that each plant was under the influence of some particular star, and that it was this influence which drew the plant out of the earth when the seed germinated. He held each plant to be a terrestrial star and each star a spiritualized plant. Giambatista Porta also believed in a relation between certain plants and corresponding stars or planets. A figure in his Phytonomonica here reproduced shows a number of lunar plants. In order to appreciate the attitude in which Paracelsius and his followers approached the subject of the relation between plants and stars, it is necessary to realize the position which astrology had come to occupy in the Middle Ages. It was in ancient Babylon that this pseudoscience mainly took its rise. Here the five planets, which we now call Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Mercury, and also the Sun and Moon, were identified in certain senses with seven great gods. The movements of these heavenly bodies were supposed to represent in symbolic fashion the deeds of these gods. It was thought possible to interpret the movements and relative positions of the planets in the Sun and Moon in a way that threw light upon the fate of mankind in so far as it depended upon the gods in question. Some centuries before the Christian era, Babylonian astrology began to influence the nations farther to the west. In Greece, the subject took a more personal turn and it was believed that the fate not only of nations but of individuals was determined in the skies and could be foretold from the position of the planets at the time of a man's birth. At a later period, speculation on the subject was carried further and further until finally not only men but all animals, vegetables, and minerals were associated either with particular planets or with the constellations of the Zodiac. That a belief in the influence of the moon upon plants dates back to very early times in western Europe as shown by the statement in Pliny's Natural History that the Druids in Britain gathered the mistletoe for medical purposes with many rites and ceremonies when the moon was six days old. To trace the history of astrology in detail is altogether beyond our province, but as an example of its universal acceptance, we may recall the reference to the supreme influence of the stars in the preface of the Arbares Zoo Toich of 1485. See page 19. Astrological ideas were familiar in Elizabethan England and are reflected in many passages in Shakespeare's plays. Never perhaps more charmingly than in Beatrice's laughing words, there was a star danced and under that I was born. Paracelsus though his name is so well known in this connection was by no means the first writer on botanical astrology. A book called De Ver Tutibus Herbarum erroneously attributed to Albertus Magnus had a wide circulation from early times being first printed in the 15th century. It was translated into many languages, one English version appearing about 1560 under the title The Book of Secrets of Albertus Magnus of the virtues of herbs, stones and certain beasts. Does not contain very much information about plants being mostly occupied with animals and minerals, but there are very definite references to astrology. For instance we are told that if the marigold be gathered the sun begin in the sign Leo in August and be wrapped in the leaf of a laurel or bay tree and a wolf's tooth be added there too, no man shall be able to have a word to speak against the bearer thereof, but words of peace. Concerning the plantain we read the rote of this herb is marvelous good against the pain of the head because the sign of the ram is supposed to be the house of the planet Mars which is the head of the whole world. The herbal of Bartolomeia's Corrector 1575 in which the plants are arranged according to the signs of the zodiac is considerably more complete and elaborate than the book to which we have just referred. It seems however impossible to discover the principle if any which guided the author in connecting any given herb with one sign of the zodiac rather than another. Much stress is laid in this herbal on the hour at which the herbs ought to be gathered, great importance being ascribed to the state of the moon at the time. We are reminded of a passage in The Merchant of Venice where Jessica says of a bright moonlit evening in such a night Medea gathered the enchanted herbs that did renew old Aeson. This aspect of the subject is emphasized in a curious little book published in 1571 Nicholas Chronica er Barum which is an astrological calendar giving information as to the appropriate times for gathering different roots and herbs. Almost contemporaneously with Characters Critter Buch the first part of a work on astrological botany was published by Lionheart Ternesier Zoom Thern. This writer who was possessed of undoubted talent was also an adventurer and charlatan of the first order. He was born at Basel in 1530 He learned his father's craft, that of goldsmith, and is said to have also helped a local doctor to collect and prepare herbs and to have been employed to read aloud to him from the works of Paracelsus. His career in Basel came to an untimely end for he seems to have tried to retaliate on some customers who treated him very badly by selling them gilded lead as a substitute for gold and consequently had to flee the country when the fraud was discovered. He traveled widely making in a special study of mining. He had an adventurous and varied life, sometimes in poverty and obscurity, sometimes in wealth and renown. During Thernesier's most influential period he lived in Berlin practicing medicine, making amulets, talismans, and secret remedies which yielded large profits. He also published astrological calendars, cast nativities, and supplemented his income by the practice of usury. At this time he owned a printing press and employed a large staff which included artists and engravers. Later on he was pursued by a succession of misfortunes, including accusations of magic and witchcraft, which compelled him to leave Germany. Little is known of the latter part of his life, he died in the last decade of the 16th century. Leonhard Thernesier projected a great botanical work in ten books. The first was published in Berlin in 1578 but the others never appeared. The title was und Beschreibung in Fluenzier, Elementenzier, und Naturlicher Wirkungen aller Framdan und Heimschein Erdigeverschassen. A Latin version of this book under the name Historia Sieb Descriptio Plantarum was published in the same year. This first installment deals only with umbilifers, which were regarded as under the dominion of the sun and the bars. The nomenclature and the figures are not clear enough to allow individual species to be recognized. Each is drawn in an ellipse surrounded by an ornamental border which contains mystical inscriptions denoting the properties of the plant. In some cases diagrams are given showing the conjunction of the stars under which the herb should be gathered. After the manner of the ancients Thernesier describes plants according to their qualities as either male or female. He also adds a third class typified by a child to symbolize those whose qualities are feeble. It may perhaps be worth while to translate here a few sentences of the first chapter of the Historia to show how far such writers as Leonhard Thernesier had departed from the pursuit of the subject upon legitimate lines. When discussing the planting of roots and herbs and the gathering of seeds he declares that it is absolutely essential that these operations should be performed so as to correspond with the stations and positions of the planets and heavenly bodies to whose control diseases are properly subject. And against disease we have to employ herbs with a due regard of course to the sex whichever it be of human beings. And so herbs intended to benefit the male sex should be procured when the sun or moon is in some male sign of the zodiac, for example Sagittarius or Aquarius or if this is impossible at least when they are in Leo. Similarly herbs intended to benefit women should be gathered under some female sign Virgo of course or if that is impossible in Taurus or Cancer. In the 17th century England became strongly infected with astrological botany the most notorious exponent of the subject was Nicholas Culpepper 1616 to 1654 who about 1640 set up as an astrologer and physician in Spittle fields his portrait is reproduced in plate 21. He created great indignation among the medical profession by publishing under the name of a physical directory an unauthorized English translation of the pharmacobia which had been issued by the college of physicians. That Culpepper was unpopular with orthodox medical practitioners is hardly surprising when we consider the way in which he speaks of them in this book as a company of proud and domineering doctors whose wits were born above 500 years before themselves. He goes on to ask is it handsome and well be seeming commonwealth to say doctor ride in state in plush with a foot cloth and not a grain of wit but what was in print before he was born. Many editions of the physical directory were issued under different names as the English physician enlarged it enjoyed great popularity and was reprinted as late as the 19th century. The edition of 1653 is described on the title page as being an astrologo physical discourse of the vulgar herbs of this nation containing a complete method of physics whereby a man may preserve his body in health or cure himself being sick for three pence charge with such things only as grow in England and they being most fit for English bodies. Culpepper describes certain herbs as being under the dominion of the sun, the moon, or planet and others as under a planet and also one of the constellations of the zodiac. His reasons for connecting a particular herb with a particular heavenly body are curiously inconsequent. He states for example that wormwood is an herb of Mars I prove it thus what delights in Marshall places is a Marshall herb but wormwood delights in Marshall places for about forges and ironworks you may gather a cartload of it ergo it is a Marshall herb. Culpepper explains that each disease is caused by a planet one way of curing the ailment is by the use of herbs belonging to an opposing planet example diseases produced by Jupiter are healed by the herbs of Mercury on the other hand the illness may be cured by sympathy that is by the use of herbs belonging to the planet which is responsible for the disease Culpepper indulges in a strange maze of similar reasons to justify the use of wormwood for affections of the eyes. The eyes are under luminaries the right eye of a man and the left eye of a woman the sun claims dominion over. The left eye of a man and the right eye of a woman are the privilege of the moon wormwood and herb of Mars cures both what belongs to the sun by sympathy because he isn't exalted in his house but what belongs to the moon by antipathy because he have his fall in hers. It is somewhat surprising to find that in his preface Culpepper claims that he surpasses all his predecessors in being alone guided by reason whereas all previous writers are as full of nonsense and contradictions as an egg is full of meat. Culpepper met with considerable opposition and criticism from his contemporaries shortly after his death William Cole in his art of assembling wrote scornfully of astrological botanists amongst which master Culpepper a man now dead and therefore I shall speak of him as modestly as I can for were he alive I should be more plain with him was a great stickler and he forsooth judges all men unfit to be physicians who are not artists in astrology as if he and some other figure flingers his companions had been the only physicians in England whereas for ought I can gather either by his books or learn from the report of others he was a man very ignorant in the form of symbols. It is interesting to notice that Cole though he seems to the modern reader very credulous in the subject of the signatures of plants was completely skeptical as to the association of astrology and botany. The main argument by which he tries to discredit it is an ingenious one. The knowledge of herbs is he says a subject as ancient as the creation as the scriptures witness he a more ancient than the sun or moon or stars they being created on the fourth day whereas plants were the third thus did God even at first compute the folly of those astrologers who go about to maintain that all vegetables and their growth are enslaved to a necessary and unavoidable dependence on the influence of the stars whereas plants were even when planets were not. End of chapter 8 section 15 of Herbal's their origin and evolution a chapter in the history of botany this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Kay Hand. Herbal's their origin and evolution a chapter in the history of botany by Agnes Arbour chapter 9 conclusions a general review of the subjects discussed in the foregoing chapters brings home to us several results of some interest perhaps the most obvious of these is the incalculable debts which botany owes to medicine an overwhelming majority of the herbalists were physicians who were led to the study of botany on account of his connection with the arts of healing as we have already pointed out medicine gave the original impulse not only to systematic botany but also to the study of the anatomy of plants however as the evolution of the herbal proceeded we have shown that botany rose from being a mere handmade of medicine to a position of comparative independence this is well exemplified in the history of plant classification when the early medical botanists attempted any arrangement of their material it was on a purely utilitarian basis the herbs were merely classified according to the qualities which made them of value to man but as the science grew the need of a more systematic classification began to make itself felt and in some of the works published in the latter half of the period we are considering there is a distinct if only partially successful attempt to group the plants according to the affinities which they present when considered in themselves and not in relation to man the idea of a natural system in the vegetable kingdom in which each plant should find its inevitable place must have been clear for instance today LaBelle when he wrote in the adversaria of an order than which nothing more beautiful exists in the heavens or in the mind of a wise man second only to the debt of botany to medicine is its debt to certain branches of the fine arts more especially wood engraving the draftsmen and engraver not only disseminated the knowledge of plants but their work must often have revealed to the botanists features which had escaped his less highly educated and subtle eye as we have already pointed out the art of plant description lagged conspicuously behind that of plant illustration the vague and crude but often picturesque accounts given by the early herbalists of the plants which they observed contrast curiously with the technically accurate but colorless and impersonal descriptions of the pens of modern botanists the rapid rise of botany in the two centuries which we have reviewed must have been greatly stimulated by the cosmopolitanism of the savants of the Renaissance periods of study at a succession of different universities and the wide European travel including visits to scientific men of various countries seem to have formed part of the recognized equipment of the botanical student possibly the zeal for travel was not altogether spontaneous but was artificially stimulated by the religious disturbances so common at the period of the reformation and later which often drove into exile the adherence of the reformed faith among whom many botanists were numbered this is exemplified in the cases of William Turner Charles de la Clouse and the Bauhin it is interesting to notice that in the work of the best herbalist of the 16th and 17th centuries such for instance as Bach, Turner, Daudens and Gaspar Bauhin we find comparatively speaking little belief in any kind of superstition connected with plants such as the doctrine of signatures or astrology a number of books dealing with such topics appeared during the period we have considered but their writers form a class apart and must not be confused with the herbalists proper whose attitude was on the whole marked by a healthy skepticism which was in advance of their time it would naturally be far from true to say that they were all quite free from superstition but considering the intellectual atmosphere of the period their enlightenment was quite remarkable when we come to consider the origin of the herbal we find that it is impossible to assign any date for its beginning in manuscript form herbals have existed from very early times but in the present book those prior to the invention of printing have been scarcely touched upon our subject has been limited to the most active life period of the printed herbal which may be reckoned as beginning in the last quarter of the 15th century with the book of nature of Opelius and the latin and german are various when this active period ended is less easily decided but in some senses it may fairly be taken as covering only the comparatively short space of 200 years there are of course a very large number of later herbals belonging to the end of the 17th the 18th and even the 19th and 20th centuries but their importance in the history of botany appears to the present writer to be relatively small and hence in this volume has been almost entirely confined to works which appeared before 1670 after this period botany rapidly became more scientific the discovery of the function of the statements which was first announced in 1682 making a very definite step in advance as time went on the herbal with its characteristic mixture of medical and botanical lore gave way before the exclusively medical pharmacobia on the one hand and the exclusively botanical flora on the other as the use of homemade remedies declined and the chemists shop took the place of the housewives herb garden and still room the practical value of the herbal diminished almost to vanishing point the best epoch in the history of the herbal from the point of view of book illustration is confined within much narrower limits than the two centuries we have been considering the suggestion has been made and seems thoroughly justified that the finest should be reckoned as falling between 1530 and 1614 that is between the woodcuts of Hans Weiditz in Brunfels Urbarium Viva Iconis and the copper plates of Crispian de Passe in the Hortus Floridus this good period thus lasted less than 100 years and belongs chiefly to the 16th century from the artistic point of view its zenith is perhaps reached in the wooden gravings which illustrate Fuchs great work De Historia Stirpium 1542 though from a more strictly scientific standpoint the drawings by Kamerarius and Gessner which appeared in 1586 and 1588 may be said to bear the poem as far as the text is concerned the culmination of the botanical works of the period under consideration may be regarded as foreshadowed in the Stirpium Adversaria Nova of Pena and De La Belle 1570 to 1571 and attained in the Pedromas 1620 and the Penax 1623 of Gasparred Bauhin in the works of the latter author classification nomenclature and description reach their high watermark though it is to the Belle and his precursor Bach one of the German fathers of botany that we owe the first definite efforts after a natural system it is pleasant to remember that Jean Bauhin to whom a scholar at Gasparred probably owed his first botanical inspiration was a pupil of Leonardo Fuchs at Tubigen so that the latter has a double claim to be associated with the results of the herbal period at its best we began this book with a portrait of Leonardo Fuchs and we may well conclude with his name that of the greatest and most typical of 16th century herbalists End of chapter 9 The Origin and Evolution a chapter in the history of botany by Agnes Arbor