Illustrations and Descriptions of Plants

They present themselves as suppliants before me: your Most Serene Highness, they humbly entreat that you might be willing to allow them to be sheltered by your protection and illuminated by your splendor. We also present before your same Throne their principal World, which we here make a matter of public law original: "publici facimus Iuris" - meaning to publish or release to the public: desiring to inscribe and dedicate it, however great or small our work may be, to your Most Serene Highness.

It is certainly a deed of great audacity, bordering on temerity, to offer such a gift to a Prince whose lineage the world venerates, and whose character and virtues are beyond all that can be said. Yet we read that small birds once brought feathers to the most magnificent Temple of the Delphic Apollo when they had nothing wealthier to give, and bees brought their wax. Thus we bring to his altars what is within our power. And we know we approach a Prince who is Most Serene, Most Clement, Most Benign, and especially well-disposed toward Letters and the Learned. Furthermore, a client's loyalty drew the Fate of Montbéliard referring to the County of Montbéliard, a sovereign enclave in France then ruled by the Dukes of Württemberg, once conceived, toward the Prince of Montbéliard; nor was it finally promoted, arranged, and polished except through the Physicians of the Most Serene Princes of Montbéliard. Then, a client's loyalty drew the Man toward the same Most Serene Prince—one who, in that great critical year Climacteric: a period of perceived great danger or turning point of his domains, the year 1635, attained the office of Principal Physician to the people of Montbéliard. He sustained that office for several five-year periods, with affairs always balanced as if on a razor's edge, and to this day he still glories in that service. Finally, a client's loyalty drew this Botanical Work toward the Prince of Montbéliard, for on every page mention is made by name of plants, both those cultivated in his Princely Garden and those growing spontaneously in the ditches and walls of the cities of the whole region, in meadows, fields, mountains, hills, groves, rivers, watered places and shores, villas and villages.

Antoninus The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus It is indeed a Paper gift, but one which that Great Emperor would not have despised, who, speaking of his own and others' inclinations, is reported to have said: "Some love horses, others wild beasts, others birds; but to me Augustus belongs the passion for acquiring books." original Greek: "Ἄλλοι μὲν ἵππων, ἄλλοι θηρίων, ἄλλοι ὀρνέων ἐρῶσιν: ἐμοὶ δὲ βιβλίων κτήσεως" Nor would that other of the Caesars Augustus have rejected it, who, contrary to the modest request of the Mantuan Poet's Virgil will, forbade the burning of his poems by a Heroic Edict:

Let the venerable power of the Laws rather be broken,
Than that one single day should consume
So many labors gathered through nights and days.

But again, why a Herbal Gift to so high a Prince? Here we would remain in suspense, if we did not have it from the Holy Scriptures that the wisest of Kings Solomon discoursed upon every plant; and if we did not know from others that Diocletian, having voluntarily left the Imperial fasces symbols of power at Nicomedia, grew old among the vegetables in his own fields; and if Archelaus, Masinissa, Gentius, the Illyrians, and other most powerful Monarchs had not transmitted their names through the centuries into the eternity of the ages by discovering, loving, and describing plants.