THE WORKS OF MARCGRAV AND PISO. 205 
second year accompanied, in the capacity of chaplain, the expedition 
which, at the instance of Admiral Coligny and the clergy of Geneva, 
was sent, in 1556, in aid of the colony of Villegagnon. He arrived in 
March 1557, in the bay of Rio de Janeiro, which he called Sinus gene- 
vensis, from the similarity of the environs. ‘During a sojourn of more 
than a year he became acquainted with the principal useful plants of 
Brazil, and gave us the first trustworthy information concerning them 
in his work*. De Candolle, in noticing Léry’s contributions T, men- 
tions the circumstance that he was the first who announced the phyto- 
geographical fact, of the plants of that country being equally different 
from those of ours, as the animals. 
But of far greater importance is the botanical information contained 
in a work prepared at Bahia, at the close of the sixteenth century, and 
inscribed to the Councillor of State, D. Christováo de Moura, according 
to a dedication dated at Madrid, in 1589, or from the inquiries of Mr. 
F. A. de Varnhagen, in 1587. Had this work been published earlier, 
it would undoubtedly have possessed the claim of being the oldest 
source of sound and solid information concerning the natural and 
moral history of Brazil. It yields scarcely to any other work of that 
period in point of fulness, multiplicity, and fidelity of reeorded facts, 
and comes nearest in comparison to Oviedo's * Historia General de las 
Indias; but fortunately it did not share the same good luck of speedy 
publication, but continued during a long time, in a few manuscript 
copies only, in the hands of some literary men. Frey Antonio de S. 
Maria Jahoat&o availed himself of it in his chronicle, entitled Orbe sera- 
fico novo Brasilico, Lisb. 1761; so did Padre Manoel Ayres de Cazal, 
in his known Corografia brasilica (Rio de Janeiro, 1817, two vols. small 
4to); Robert Southey in his History of Brazil (Lond. 1817 seq.), and 
lastly Ferd. Denis, according to a codex preserved in the Parisian 
Library (sub n. 609, supp. franc.), in his book: ‘ Univers, ou his- 
toire et description de tous les peuples,” ete. (Paris, 1737, 8vo). At 
length the Royal Aeademy of Sciences at Lisbon published a copy, in 
* Histoire d'un vo fait en la terre du Brésil autrement dite Amérique. The 
first edition was dies Rochelle in 1578; also the second in 1580. Three subse- 
quent editions at Geneva, of 1585, 1594 and 1600, attest the great interest which 
rou di report had excited. So late as 1794, a Germam translation appeared at 
unster. 
t Histoire de la Botanique genevoise, 1830, p. 3, and note A. Compare Lacroix 
du Maine, Bibl. franc. 1. p. 237. 
