CHAP, ii.] from Cesalpino to Linnaeus. 59 



1619, and there, as we may confidently believe, became 

 acquainted with the botanical doctrines of Cesalpino, who had 

 died fifteen years before. Returning to Germany, he held 

 various professorships during the succeeding ten years inLiibeck 

 and Helmstadt, and became Rector of the Johanneum in Ham- 

 burg in 1629. He occupied himself with the philosophy of 

 the day, in which he appeared as an opponent of scholasticism 

 and of Aristotle, and also with various branches of science, 

 mathematics, physics, mineralogy, zoology, and botany. In all 

 these subjects he displayed high powers as a student and a 

 teacher, and especially as a critical observer ; in botany at least 

 he was a successful investigator. He was the first in Germany, 

 as Cesalpino had been in Italy, who combined a philosophi- 

 cally educated intellect with exact observation of plants. 



His pupils were at first the only persons who profited by his 

 botanical studies, for with his many occupations and a perpetual 

 desire to make his investigations more and more complete he 

 himself published nothing. In 1662 his pupil Martin Fogel 

 printed the ' Doxoscopiae Physicae Minores,' a work of enor- 

 mous compass left in manuscript at the master's death, and 

 another pupil, Johann Vagetius, the ' Isagoge Phytoscopica,' in 

 1678. Ray however tells us that a copy of notes on botanical 

 subjects had already reached England in 1660. The 'Doxo- 

 scopiae ' contains a great number of detached remarks on single 

 plants and on their distinguishing marks, and propositions con- 

 cerning the methods and principles of botanical research, all 

 in the form of aphorisms which he had from time to time 

 committed to paper. The number and contents of these 

 aphorisms show the earnest attention which he bestowed on 

 the determination of species ; he is displeased that so many 

 botanists devote more time and labour to the discovery of new 

 .plants, than to referring them carefully and logically to their 

 true genera by means of their specific differences. He was the 

 first who objected to the traditional division of plants into 

 trees and herbs, as not founded on their true nature. But 



