352 Analysis of Scientific Books and Memoirs. 



able obstacle to the progress of botany. We never find any but the plants 

 of Theophrastus, of Dioscorides, and of Pliny ; notwithstanding that bota- 

 nists have not known the hundredth part of the plants which covered the 

 globe- Theophrastus never went out of Greece ; Dioscorides, more curious 

 to discover the medical properties of vegetables than to describe their forms, 

 has generally left only incomplete notes for the botanist ; and Pliny has 

 copied, without judgment and without remark, the authors which have 

 preceded him. We cannot apply to the plants of Germany or of France, 

 the names under which the ancients designated those of Italy, of Greece, 

 and of Asia. The hand of the Creator has varied almost infinitely the 

 productions of the vegetable kingdom. There is scarcely a spot, if we 

 may so say, which does not offer some plant unknown elsewhere. Before 

 studying the species of foreign countries, (of which we generally see no- 

 thing but specimens disfigured in the Herbaria,) let us examine those of 

 our native soil. The true means of knowing them, is to traverse the plains, 

 the vallies, and the mountains. Libraries alone are insufficient to form 

 botanists. To what do our subtle reasonings, upon the nature and quality 

 of species, lead us? We are not even able to distinguish one from an- 

 other. And what a shame for us to quote continually the Arabian authors, 

 who neither knew how to observe nature, nor to comprehend the books 

 of the ancients ; whose texts they have corrupted, and who have filled 

 their own writings with the grossest errors." 



Induced by reflections similar to these, there appeared many men in 

 Germany during the sixteenth century, whose names deserve to be com- 

 memorated as having contributed to advance the science in question. 



Otho Brunsfels, the son ot a cooper at Mayence, himself a schoolmaster, 

 and afterwards a physician at Strasburgh, published in the latter city, 

 about the year 1532, his " Herbarium vivct Iconts," in folio, with many 

 wood engravings, and is deservedly reckoned by Haller among the re- 

 storers of botany. 



Fuehsius* a professor of Ingolstadt, and afterwards at Tubingen, edit- 

 ed at Basle his Historia Stirpium, in folio, 1542. Here likewise are 

 many excellent wood-cuts, scarcely inferior to those of Brunsfeh. In 1552 

 appeared Valerius Cordus " Historia Plantarum." The author himself, 

 who had carefully investigated the country about Wittinberg, dying from 

 an accident at the early age of twenty-nine, left his MSS., containing 

 many new species of plants, for posthumous publication. This was under- 

 taken by Conrad Gt.mer, one of the most learned men of his time, and 

 who has been complimented as the " greatest naturalist the world had seen 

 since the time of Aristotle ;" but who, although thus connected with the 



* It is not, perhaps, generally known that the common English name given to 

 the Digitalis purpurea is a corruption of that of this author. The generic narae(.Di- 

 gitalit) was first applied to this plant by Fuehsius, from the resemblance of the flowers 

 to the fingers of a glove ; thence the plant was called Digitalis FucJisii, (Fuch's Di- 

 gitalis) by succeeding writers ; and from that its English appellation of Fuch'x 

 or For't Glove was derived. 



