LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 223 



"Anno Dom. 1554, 21 Febr. Hieronymus Tragos, animae 

 corporisque medicus, et canonicus huius sedis, in Domino Jesu 

 obdormivit; cuius anima in consortio beatorum quiescit. Amen." 



Phytography. The third in order of time among the more 

 noted German botanists of his century, Tragus is the first in their 

 line to actually describe plants. Brunfels had caused pictures to be 

 made, and then by way of comment on each picture had gathered 

 together all that creditable authors in times past had written about 

 the plant, repeating their language to the letter, and citing reli- 

 giously the volumes and the pages. Fuchs had also pictured 

 every plant, and then to lessen the cost of printing, had presented 

 short descriptions, compiled from other authors, and for the most 

 part given forth as his own. 



Two circumstances, both beneficent, united their influences to 

 make Tragus' work peculiarly and distinctively a book of plant 

 description. First of all, the man was by nature an ardent lover 

 of plants. He began to pursue botany for the mere love of it, 

 without thought of thereby acquiring either fame or profit. He 

 who loves things will see much in them to which the indifferent 

 calm and cool observer is blind. If the bom botanist — ^not the 

 machine made one — write of plants he will find language wherewith 

 to enable his readers to see what he has seen in a plant ; and this is 

 phytography. The second favorable circumstance was that of 

 poverty. Tragus at first had no money with which to employ 

 draftsmen and engravers. When he yielded to the entreaties of 

 friends of botany that he would prepare a book, he wrote it in the 

 German language, and with the intent that unfamiliar plants at 

 least &hould be recognizable with German readers by his verbal 

 descriptions of them alone. In passing at once from the descrip- 

 tions in Fuchsius to those of the Latin edition of Tragus, one is 

 impressed by the originality and the vastly superior excellency 

 of the latter, it should be recalled that the high quality of them is 

 largely due to their having been first written and published in Ger- 

 man,^ and without thought of their ever being accompanied by 

 pictorial aids to the identification of the plants; and that it was 

 their great success as descriptions that called for the republication 

 of the book in a Latin version, so that the whole might be available 

 to scholars everywhere outside of Germany. 



While easily to be ranked among the fathers of phytography, 



» Both the New Kreutterbuch (1539) and the Kreutterbuch (1546) are in 

 German; the former without illustrations. 



