The use of a black background, against which the stalks and leaves form a contrast in white, which we noticed in the ‘Book of Nature,’ is carried further in the ‘Ortus Sanitatis.’ This is shown particularly well in the Tree of Paradise (Text-fig. 12) and also in Text-figs. 10 and 81. No consistent method is followed in the coarse shading which is employed. In some cases there seems to have been an attempt at the convention, used so successfully by the Japanese, of darkening the underside of the leaf, but, sometimes, in the same figure, certain leaves are treated in this way, and others not. In some of the genre pictures, Noah’s Ark trees are introduced, with crowns consisting entirely of parallel horizontal lines, decreasing in length from below upwards, so as to give a triangular form. [Illustration: Text-fig. 81. “Botris” [Ortus Sanitatis, Mainz, 1491].] An edition of the ‘Ortus Sanitatis,’ which was published in Venice in 1511, is illustrated in great part with wood-cuts based on the original figures. They have, however, a very different appearance, since a great deal of shading is introduced, and in some cases parallel lines are laid in with considerable dexterity. ‘The Grete Herball’ and a number of works of the early sixteenth century derived from the ‘Herbarius zu Teutsch,’ the ‘Ortus Sanitatis,’ and similar sources, are of no importance in the history of botanical illustration, since scarcely any of their figures are original. The oft-repeated set of wood-cuts, ultimately derived from the ‘Herbarius zu Teutsch,’ were also used to illustrate Hieronymus Braunschweig’s Distillation Book (Liber de arte distillandi de Simplicibus, 1500). That the conventional figures of the period did not satisfy the botanist is shown by some interesting remarks by Hieronymus at the conclusion of his work. He tells the reader that he must attend to the text rather than the figures, “for the figures are nothing more than a feast for the eyes, and for the information of those who cannot read or write[34].” During the first three decades of the sixteenth century, the art of botanical illustration was practically in abeyance in Europe. Such books as were published were chiefly supplied with mere copies of older wood-cuts. But, in 1530, an entirely new era was inaugurated with the appearance of Brunfels’ great work, the ‘Herbarum vivæ eicones,’ in which a number of plants native to Germany, or commonly cultivated there, were drawn with a beauty and fidelity which have rarely been surpassed (Text-figs. 22, 23, 24, 25, 66, 82, 83, 84). It is interesting to recall that the date 1530 is often taken, in the study of other arts (e.g. stained glass), as the limit of the “Gothic” period, and the beginning of the “Renaissance.” [Illustration: _Plate XVII_ Study of _Aquilegia vulgaris_ L., Columbine [Albrecht Dürer, 1526. Drawing in the Albertina, Vienna]. _Reduced._]