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12 INTRODUCTION TO BOTANY.
brought out in HTS, and was followed in 1483 by an edition
of Theophrastus, with a Latin translation by Theodore
Gaza, a Greek emigrant, which is still esteemed the best.
The translation of Dioscorides by Matthiolus, first printed
in 1554, supplanted that by Barbaras, and run through
seventeen editions, 32,000 copies being said to be sold before
the year 1561 ; but the edition of Caspar Bauhin, in 1598,
is now esteemed the best.
The publication of these fathers of botany was followed
by that of a host of commentanes upon them, whose authors
endeavoured to find the plants of Syria and Egyjjt
in Germany, foi-getful of the difference of climate ; and
thus, instead of dilucidating the author, they merely mislead
their followers. Even now, after the labours of Rauwolf^
who travelled in Syria, Babylon, and Egypt, in the
sixteenth century; of Tournefort, who travelled also in
Greece, Crete, &c.; and of Sir James Edward Smith; it
does not appear, that of the 700 medical plants mentioned
by Dioscorides, more than 400 can be said to be properly
ascertained.
These translations of the ancients were followed in 1484,
at which time Richard the Third reigned here, by a famojfjs
herbal, printed at Mentz, imder the title of Herbarium
; and this was followed the next year by the Ortus
[i. e. Hortus] Sanitatis, ascribed to Cuba, a physician,
first of Augsburgh, and afterwards of Frankfort. The
wood-cuts with which they are adorned, or rather disfigured,
are rude, and seldom have much resemblance of
the thing which they profess to illustrate.
Although printing was introduced into England in the
reign of Henry the Seventh, yet no works on botany, in
the English language, were produced in his reign, although
hunting and angling had occupied the labours of the press.
It was not indeed till 1516, the seventh of Henry the
Eighth, that the Grete Herbal, with cuts, appeared. This
book was very popular, and went through several editions.
There is no author's name to it, but it was probably made
up from the French translation of the Hortus Sanitatis,
with some alterations and additions. It mentions more
than 400 vegetables, or their products, and of these about
150 are English, but they are no ways distinguished from
the exotics. The cuts are smaller than those of the ELortus,
but equally rude and inaccurate.
While the mere English reader was obliged to content
himself with this miserable compilation, Otho Brunst'el and