692 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SKETCH OF PIERRE BELON. 



'^XN 1555/' says M. Louis Grid, "Pierre Belon, of Mans, well 

 -L known by his travels in Italy, Greece, and tlie East, re- 

 vealed himself as an observer of great sagacity and as a bold 

 thinker. With him came at once the end of compilation and the 

 beginning of observation. He added to the common ti-easure of 

 knowledge more wealth than all his predecessors from antiquity 

 and all his contemporaries put together/' M. Gustave Tissandier 

 calls him one of the great savants of the sixteenth century, who, 

 like his contemporary, Bernard Palissy, would rather study facts 

 in the book of nature than in men's books — " a conscientious ob- 

 server, fascinated with the truth, we may consider him one of the 

 initiators of modern natural history." 



Pierre Belon was born at Soulleti^re, near Mans, in 1517, and 

 died in 1564. His tastes for studies in natural history were devel- 

 oped at an early age, and were encouraged by his friend Rend de 

 Bellay, Bishop of Mans, with whose aid he entered upon the study 

 of medicine at Paris. There he formed a friendship with the poet 

 Ronsard. Having obtained his doctor's degree, he went, in 1540, 

 to Wiirtemberg, to attend the lectures of the botanist Valerius 

 Cordus. In company with his teacher he traveled through Ger- 

 many and Bohemia. The country was greatly excited over the 

 controversies of the Reformation ; and at Thionville, on his return 

 journey home, he was arrested by the Spanish occupants, under 

 suspicion of being a partisan of the new doctrines. He was 

 obliged to buy his freedom with funds that were advanced by a 

 learned gentleman named Dehamme, who was a great admirer of 

 Ronsard. Returning to Paris, he found generous protectors in 

 Bishop Duprat of Clermont, the Cardinal of Lorraine, and the Car- 

 dinal of Tournon. Tournon provided him with quarters in the 

 Abbey of Saint-Germaine, and advanced the cost of the voyages 

 which he desired to make for prosecuting his studies. The words 

 in which Belon conveyed his request for this aid at once attest 

 his earnestness in the pursuit of his object, and illustrate the 

 spirit of a time when the small were free to call upon the great 

 for help in such matters. " When you know," he said, " the de- 

 sire that I have to obtain knowledge of the things pertaining to 

 the material of medicines and plants, which I can not well acquire 

 except by a long pilgrimage, you will be pleased to command me 

 to go and seek them in distant regions, in the places of their 

 origin." 



Belon left France at the beginning of 1546, and was gone be- 

 tween three and four years. He went to Crete and Constan- 



