As we have already pointed out, the art of plant description lagged conspicuously behind that of plant illustration. The vague and crude, but often picturesque, accounts, given by the early herbalists of the plants which they observed, contrast curiously with the technically accurate, but colourless and impersonal descriptions from the pens of modern botanists. The rapid rise of botany, in the two centuries which we have reviewed, must have been greatly stimulated by the cosmopolitanism of the savants of the renaissance. Periods of study at a succession of different universities, and wide European travel, including visits to scientific men of various countries, seem to have formed part of the recognised equipment of the botanical student. Possibly the zeal for travel was not altogether spontaneous, but was artificially stimulated by the religious disturbances so common at the period of the Reformation and later, which often drove into exile the adherents of the Reformed Faith, among whom many botanists were numbered. This is exemplified in the cases of William Turner, Charles de l’Écluse, and the Bauhins. It is interesting to notice that, in the works of the best herbalists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such for instance as Bock, Turner, Dodoens and Gaspard Bauhin, we find, comparatively speaking, little belief in any kind of superstition connected with plants, such as the doctrine of signatures, or astrology. A number of books dealing with such topics appeared during the period we have considered, but their writers form a class apart, and must not be confused with the herbalists proper, whose attitude was, on the whole, marked by a healthy scepticism which was in advance of their time. It would, naturally, be far from true to say that they were all quite free from superstition, but, considering the intellectual atmosphere of the period, their enlightenment was quite remarkable. [Illustration: Text-fig. 112. Wood-cut from the title-page of the Grete Herball, 1526. _Reduced._]