File:The American garden (1891) (17528186163).jpg

Title: The American garden
Identifier: americangarden121891broo (find matches)
Year: 1873 (1870s)
Authors:
Subjects: Horticulture; Gardening
Publisher: Brooklyn, N. Y. : (s. n. )
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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GLIMPSES OF OLD HERBALS. 259 supplemented by wood cuts, usually accurate and often excellent representations of plants, and which can in most cases be readily identified with our modern species and varieties. We learn from Pliny that paintings of plants were extant in the first century, and we hear of illustrated manuscripts of Dioscorides more than a thousand years old, but these illustrations were probably of little value if we judge by those copied in Dodonseus Pemp- tades, 1583, from the Codex Casareus in the imperial li- brary of Vienna, ascribed to the year 492. The wood cut of Arc- tion is an example of this. The first illustrated botani- cal work after the invention of print- ing is said to be German, The Book of Nature, p u b - hshed at Augs- burg between the years 1475 and 1478, in which 176 plants are noticed and many figured. This was followed by the Herbariiis Maguntae 1484,the Herbarius Patavics i486, and about the same period the Ortus Sajti- tatis. Among n o t e - worthy books, without whose mention even a sketch of early botany would be incomplete, is the book of agricul- ture of Ibn-al-awam, a Moorish Spaniard of the twelfth century, in which we find a chapter on the cultivation of spinage, which he calls 7-ais al hoii- quol, the prince of vegetables. Albertus Magnus' (born 1193, died 1280) De Vegetabi/um, in which we find mention of the white flower of Cucurbita, which identifies the cucurbit of his time with the
Text Appearing After Image:
The Tree which produced Swim DURET, common bottle gourd, Lagenaria. Among books which throw side light on the history of vegetables are the cook-book of Apicius Cceleus, of the Roman period, and the Forme of Cury, a cook-book com- piled in England in 1390 for the use of the court of " kyng Richard the Secunde kyng of .ngland aftir the conquest; the which was accounted the best and ryallest vyand of alle csten .iynges." We find here "spynoches," which seems to dispute the asser- tion of DeCandolle that spinage was new to Europe in the sixteenth cen- tury. O f course among noteworthy publications it is unnecessary to mention the well- known Pliny, Columella, Palla- dius, etc., among the Romans, the Geoponica,Diosco. rides, Theophras- tus, etc., among the Greeks, or Crescentius, 1235- 1320, whose Opiis Ruralium, 1474, is now before m e, Nor is it within the present scheme to consider the non- illustrated works. My earliest her- bal is the Her- baritis Maguiita, printed in 1484. It i s a small folio, unpaged, contain- ing 150 chapters and wood-cuts, each occupying a single leaf, the language Latin, the type black letter, the arrange- ment alphabetical, the descriptions scarcely any, the medicinal uses quite fully given. The wood- cuts are simply atrocious, in many cases not recog- nizable ; in other cases they can be determined only through the assistance afforded by the names. The figure of the lettuce here reproduced will give an idea of the rudeness of the design and execution of MING Fishes «nd Flying Birds. 1605.

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