CHAPTER IX 

 VALERIUS CORDUS, 1515-154 



HITHERTO Valerius Cordus remains almost unknown except by 

 name. Not one of the four of his own countrymen who wrote 

 botanical history within the nineteenth century ever looked into 

 Cordus' writings all of them published after his early death 

 far enough to see whether he had been least or greatest among 

 German botanists of the sixteenth century. 



Sprengel says that "Valerius Cordus, son of Euricius, if he had 

 lived longer, might have given to his works a certain maturity 

 which is conspicuously wanting to them"; 1 after which anything 

 but laudatory opinion he proceeds to give the young man full 

 credit for having travelled widely in many parts of Germany, and 

 for having discovered and published a goodly number of new plants. 



Of a very different tenor is the language of Ernst Meyer: "A 

 splendid and all too transitory phenomenon was Euricius Cor- 

 dus' son Valerius." 2 While in my view this opinion of Valerius 

 Cordus' merits is not extravagant, still Meyer, as it seems to me, 

 fails to show reason for such high praise. He does much better 

 than Sprengel; yet I am obliged to infer that he borrowed the 

 opinions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authorities on 

 Cordus, rather than as having made the young man's writings a 

 subject of careful examination. The estimate of the best botanists 

 of two generations after Cordus was an exalted one, as to his merits; 

 and that outside of Germany. 



Sachs in his volume of history seems to have found it easy to 

 adopt Sprengel' s tone of indifference to this youth of rare genius. 

 "For the present," he says, "we pass by Valerius Cordus, Conrad 

 Gesner, Matthioli, and several others of no importance," 3 etc., etc.; 

 and this is the only reference to him which I have been able to find 



J Hist. Rei. Herb., vol. i, p. 346. 



2 Geschichte der Botanik, vol. iv, p 317. 



* Sachs, Geschichte, p. 31. 



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