Hunt Institute Archives Text Discovery Platform

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very rare work of which doubtfully ten copies still exist. Oviedo was
sent by the Spanish crown on several missions to America in the first
third of the century following Columbus' discovery. He travelled ex-
tensively in the West Indies, Mexico and South America, and, as an eye-
witness, reports many novel observations.

Notable among the books selected for their illustrations was the so-
called Latin Herbarius, printed in Mainz by Peter Schoeffer in 1484. It
is the second printed botanical book containing illustrations; each plant
is represented by a figure so stylized in most cases as to make identifi-
cation almost impossible without the accompanying text and the Latin and
German names by which it was known. Beside this book was placed Brunfels
Herbarum vivae eicones [Pictures of living plants] of 1530. This is the
first printed botanical work to be illustrated wholly by drawings made
from living plants; the artist, Hans Weiditz, did so well that in almost
every instance the identity of the plant represented is certain to one
who knows it in nature.

The great Swedish scientist, Linnaeus (1707-1778), was first of all
a botanist, although in his efforts to systematize the natural world he
had to treat both minerals and animals as well as plants. But the bulk
of his writings are on botany, and of these the Garden has a very excel-
lent collection. Among the books in the exhibit was the first edition of
his Systema naturae (1735); here, on twelve large broadside pages he
displays in systematic order all of the larger groups of the three king-
doms of nature; mineral, vegetable and animal. He spent a large part of
his life elaborating this system, and present-day taxonomists are still
at work on it. Other works shown were first edition copies of his Genera
plantarum (1737) and his Species plantarum (1753). In the latter, surely