GEORGE MARC GRAVE 251 



Our knowledge of Marcgrave's early life is especially scanty, our 

 most reliable and almost only authority being Manget or the unknown 

 writer in his " Bibliotheca Scriptorum Medico rum/' 1731, whose 

 account the others probably copied. 3 



From him we learn that George Marcgrave was born September 10, 

 1610, at Liebstadt, a town of Meissen in upper Saxony. He came of a 

 good family which had lived in Liebstadt for two hundred years. His 

 father and his maternal grandfather were men well educated for that 

 time, being " learned in theology and in Latin and Greek." 



These men, seeing that Marcgrave was a boy of fine character and 

 great promise, seem to have devoted much time and attention to bis 

 education. They taught him Latin and Greek and saw to it that his 

 talents in music and painting were developed, so that he turned out to 

 be no mean musician and " a painter not to be contemned." These 

 same wise parents seeing that, if Marcgrave would ever do anything in 

 the world, he must get out into the world, exhorted him to travel and 

 study, and he, nothing loth, set out in 1627 in the seventeenth year of 

 his life, and did not return to the paternal roof for eleven years. 



During this time he visited and studied mathematics, botany, chem- 

 istry and medicine at ten German universities (academise). These 

 were Argentorata, Basel, Ingoldstadt, Altdorff, Erfurt, Wittenberg, 

 Leipsic, Griefswald and Eostock, where he dwelt and studied with 

 Simon Paulli, a distinguished botanist. Thence he went to Stettin, 

 where he spent two years studying astronomy with Laurence of Eich- 

 stadt, the most celebrated astronomer of his time. Here Marcgrave 

 seems to have become so proficient that he was of material assistance to 

 his teacher in working out certain astronomical ephemerides, and Man- 

 get tells us that the latter gave credit to him in the preface of his work 

 published in 1634. 



After traveling in the north of Germany and in Denmark, Marc- 

 grave went to Leyden in Holland, where he spent two years, devoting 

 his nights to the study of astronomy from the tower or observatory of 

 the university and his days to botanizing in the gardens and fields. 

 His masters here were Adolphus Vorstius and Jacob Golius, the former 

 a botanist and the latter an astronomer. 



Marcgrave was now in his twenty-eighth year, and in the plenitude 

 of his powers both physical and intellectual. His travel and study of 



college. To all who have so kindly helped in making this article cordial thanks 

 are returned. 



8 The authorship of this sketch is an interesting problem, which Mr. Lyden- 

 berg has vainly endeavored to solve. He notes that the writer, who makes it 

 clear that he was a personal friend of Marcgrave's and a contemporary of the 

 principals in Count Maurice's expedition to Brasil, could not have been Manget 

 himself, since he was not born until 1652 and Marcgrave died in 1644;. With this 

 understanding and to avoid multiplication of words, he will however be hereafter 

 referred to as Manget. 



