HISTORY OF BOTANY. 37 



and last, the virtues, according to Dioscorides, Plinj^, 

 Galen, and others. The Fuchsia was so named by Plumier 

 in honour of Fuchs. 



Pietro Andrea Mattioli, or Matthiolus as he is called in 

 Latin, published his ' Commentaries on the Materia Medica 

 of Dioscorides ' in 1548, as was previously mentioned. He 

 was an Italian botanist of great repute, born at Siena, 1500, 

 and died at Trente in 1577. His 'Commentaries' form a 

 very fine work, and the illustrations are beautifully executed. 

 He freely attacks the opinions of both older and contem- 

 poraneous writers, perhaps especially Fuchs. The genus 

 Matthiola is named in honour of him. 



We have next a writer of our own country of w^hom we 

 may be justly proud — William Turner. During the time 

 when, as we have just seen, the study of Botany was making 

 great strides abroad, England was remaining in a state of 

 comparatively abject and lamentable ignorance, unrelieved 

 by any intelligent work on the subject, excepting a treatise 

 by Judge Fitzherbert, 15'J4, on husbandry. Turner says, 

 " Being then a student of Pembroke Hall, where I could 

 learn never one Greke, neither Latin, nor English name, 

 even among the physicians, of any herbe or tree, such was 

 the ignorance at that time ; and as yet there was no English 

 Herbal, but one, all full of unlearned cacographies, and 

 falsely naming of herbs." William Turner was a divine, 

 physician, and naturalist, and was born at Morpeth, in 

 Northumberland, about the beginning of the sixteenth 

 century. He studied both in England and abroad, spending 

 some time in Germany and Italy. He was imprisoned by 

 Bishop Gardiner for advocating the principles of the Kefor- 

 mation, and afterwards suffered persecution in Queen Mary's 

 reign, which caused him to leave England ; but on the 

 accession of Queen Elizabeth he returned, and was restored 

 to those preferments of which he had been deprived. The 



