MAIiTIUS ON THE BOTANY OF BRAZIL. 5 



and in Iiis " Flora Lusitanicce et Brasiliensis Specimen." 

 Other species of the Province of Para, Vandelli received 

 from the physician of the governor of the Estado de Para, 

 Don Mendoza Furtado, the brother of Pombal, and from Dr 

 Brandam, the vicar-general of Parji. The exertions of Vel- 

 lozo were far more productive than those even of his teacher. 

 During a residence of several years in the house of a priest 

 at Mariana, he collected and described a great part oi^ the 

 plants that presented themselves to his researches in the 

 fertile and hilly environs of that town. His manuscripts 

 found their way to many of his scholars at Villa Rica, some 

 are now in Dr Martius' possession, and Dr Gomides of Mari- 

 ana employed others of them in the compilation of his work 

 on officinal plants of Minas, (July, 1814.) Colonel Joam. 

 Gomez da Silveira Mendon^a, afterwards director of the 

 powder manufactory, and subsequently Minister of Marine, 

 was one of his pupils. 



When Vellozo returned to the capital, he occupied him- 

 self especially with the Flora of the environs of Rio de 

 Janeiro, and towards the end of the last century and during 

 the beginning of the present one, he prepared a large collec- 

 tion of drawings, which were preserved in the public library 

 at Rio, and which now (too late not to be greatly behind the 

 present state of the rapidly progressing science), have been 

 lithographed and published. Hence has originated the 

 " Flora Fluminensis" a strange publication, which may be 

 held up as an example of an ill-advised literary undertaking, 

 and on so great a scale that it ought never to have been 

 commenced. Eleven huge folio volumes with about fifteen 

 hundred* plates constitute this bulky work, whose usefulness 

 is, alas ! not in proportion to the expense it occasioned. Very 

 many genera that are here introduced as new, are not so, 

 but known before ; others, with old names, are either new or 



have been republished in Romer's " Scriptores de Plantis HispaiUcis, 

 Lusitanicis, Brasiliensibus.'^ Nuremb. 1797. 



* The Editor of the Index savs 1640. 



