Hunt Institute Archives Text Discovery Platform

Page transcription

Its illustrations are highly stylized, are presumably more of
Mediterranean than of Central European plants.... What is true, are they
all German plants or Mediterranean plants? I am inclined to believe you
and Payne, but you must admit it is confusing.

Furthermore, our copy has no colored illustrations, has no title
page and has this peculiar binding (I believe you said it was dog's
leather). Please let me know what you know about our copy and how we
acquired it (I know it is in the Sturtevant catalogue).

I am enclosing a xerox copy of two pages of Kleeb's A catalogue
of early Herbals; mostly from the well-known Library of Dr. Karl Becher,
Karlsbad. On the eighth line from above he writes "Only one copy in
America (St. Louis), lacking the first leaf." It would be exciting if
this is our copy.

Furthemerore, I remember that you told me our copy is the second
printing of the first edition. I read that the second printing was
done by the brothers I. and C. Hist at Speier also in 1484. You will
gfind this under item 4 of page 3 of the enclosed xerox copy.

I find all this very confusing and certainly am not very happy
to undertake this task. So, any help you can give me will be more than
appreciated. If you could annotate this letter, which might be easier
for you than writing separately, I should be most grateful. However,
if your time allows, write me as much as you can. I wish I could do
anything here for you, but you seem to know everything.

We have a lot of new people here. André's successor is Dr. Duncan
Porter who occupies André's old office together with his wife who is his
secretary. He brought with him thousands of books, so that Walter Lewis
has to buy shelving for him. His office is also being shared by Dr. Joan
Novicke, but she rarely uses it, since there is no room for her specimens
etc. on account of Porter's large library. In Will Blackwell's office