Hunt Institute Archives Text Discovery Platform

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understanding.

Apart from a few reprints of the XVth, and a few new editions of the XVIth and XVIIth centuries, all the herbals we have mentioned, with the exception of the Prague Botanikus edition and the Berlin Thurneisser print, were thus produced at Mainz, Frankfurt, Strassburg or Basel. Of course there are plant-illustrations in other works too, not only in editions of P.de Crescentis and other older authors, but also in some medicine-books, as e.g. in the so-called "Garden of Paradise, in which the finest herbs are pictured" ("Paradiesgärtnlein darinnu die adelste Krüuter abcontrafeytet sind") written entirely in verse by G.Rossbach and published in 1508 by Johann Spiese at Frankfort-on-M. These books however offer nothing new, or usually they are illustrated with the pictures we already know or at least with copies of these. More important are the writings of some colonists, who describe in special treatises, in text and pictures, the plants they found on their expeditions into foreign countries. These works however, usually only fitted out with very few illustrations, were meant for experts only and do not belong to the group of herbals we are considering and which were addressed to a wider public. So I think I can bring my subject to an end.

It is rather unpleasant to see, that, as I have demonstrated especially those editions, which were produced with most care and expense, could not get firmly established, while those showing less originality kept going through centuries. Still, it can be explained by the fact, that there were only very few real botanists, while the doctors were not specially interested in learning about new plants, of which the pharmacological effects were unknown and which they would not purchase of the apothecaries'. Also physicians were very rare out in the country, so that rural clergymen