Hunt Institute Archives Text Discovery Platform

Page transcription

1941, 439-42; reprinted from Ann.Rep. of the Lib. of
Congress, Washington, 1941, 155-7, with editorial note by
SARTON). The printing of herbals in China began before 1000
A.D.. The book of 1249, which Hummel has described, is a
very fine example of early printing. Its ancestry can be traced
back to a herbal compiled towards the end of the eleventh cen-
tury, which was itself based upon earlier works...HUMMEL
reproduces the figures of Euphorbia pekinensis Rupr. from
the 1249 herbal; they are astonishingly similar to certain
much later European illustrations of much later date.
Perhaps the most famous of the early botanical gardens,
that of Montpellier, is the subject of an historical study
by D.MAW (J. R.Hort. Soc., 66, 1941, 121-8 and 158-63). P.R.
de BELLEVAL (c. 1564-1632) initiated the garden in the last
decade of the sixteenth century. He had pleaded that the stu-
dents tended to abandon the school of medicine at Montpellier,
in favour of those Italian universities which already possessed
botanic gardens, and in 1596 Henry IV was moved to order his
treasury to find a site and to pay the wages of a gardener.
BELLEVAL anticipated modern methods by imitating natural condi-
tions for marsh, water and rock herbs; he is also remembered
for his introduction of the cultivation of the mulberry tree
into Languedoc. The success of the garden is shown by the
fact that, two or three years after its foundation, 1332 species
species were being grown. But less than a quarter of a century
later, much of BELLEVAL's enthusiastic work was tragically
undone. It was decided to increase the fortifications of the
town, since conflicts between the Catholics and Huguenots had