TULIP. 139 



common Tulip lias very properly been named 

 Tul i pa GesneriaHa. 



Balbinus asserts, for the honour of Prague, that 

 the Tulip was first sent to that city by Busbee, from 

 whence they were afterwards spread all over Ger- 

 many. C. Clusius, the celebrated Botanist of 

 Arras, who introduced the Horse Chestnut (JEscu- 

 lusj through the means of the imperial Ambassador 

 at the Porte, tells us that Busbequliis received a 

 great quantity of the seed, together with many 

 bulbs, of the Tulip from Constantinople, on the 

 year that he, Clusius, went to Vienna. Busbee 

 going to France, left his Tulip bulbs under the care 

 of Clusius, who thinking them old and withered 

 concluded they would come to nothing, and there- 

 fore committed them to the ground in a heap, and 

 to his astonishment they produced a great, variety 

 of flowers. 



Clusius also gave more than a hundred of the 

 bulbs to an apothecary at Vienna to be preserved 

 in sugar, in the same manner as the roots of the 

 Orchis, with a view to ascertain whether they had 

 not the same qualities. It is also related in 

 Martyn's edition of Miller, that a merchant of 

 Antwerp had a cargo of Tulip roots as early as 

 1562, and taking them for a sort of onion, ordered 

 some to be roasted under embers, and ate them 

 with oil and vinegar like common onions : the rest 



