Mertens and Koch's Deutschland' s Flora. 353 



progress of botany in Germany, yet being a native of Switzerland, and 

 professor at Zuricb, does not so properly come within our province. 



Thai, Joachim Camerarittt, Jungernianv, and Rauwolff] who travelled 

 in the cast, flourished during the same century ; each in bis turn being in- 

 strumental in advancing the knowledge of botany at that early period. 



In the seventeenth century we have Rudolph Jacob Camerarius, pro- 

 fessor at Tubingen, who seems to have been one of the first who made ex- 

 periments upon the sexes of plants, and ascertained that the pistil was 

 imperfect, unless acted upon by the stamens. Rivinus, too, of Leipzig, 

 in his great work, " Inlrodvctio generalis in Rem Herbarium," publish- 

 ed between 1690 and 1699, established a method that was long followed in 

 that country ; and this depended upon the corolla, which he considered the 

 perfection of the plant. During this century, however, few other bota- 

 nists of eminence could be mentioned ; and in botanic gardens, at least 

 in what deserved that name, which now began to be established in all other 

 countries of Europe, Germany seems to have been particularly deficient. 



In the eighteenth century, Germany boasts of her Dillenius, who publish- 

 ed at Giessen, where he was professor at the university, several botanical 

 memoirs, and his celebrated " Catalogus Plantarum sponte circa Gis.uim 

 nascentium :" but, as is well known, bis most valuable works, " Historia 

 Muscorim" and " Hortus Elthamensis," appeared after he came to reside 

 in Britain. Ruxbaum, * also, who travelled to Constantinople, gave to the 

 world, in 1740, his " Plantarum minus cognitarum Centuria." Ludwig of 

 Leipzig, too, and Gleditsch of Berlin, may be mentioned as supporting 

 systems in botany, which were soon forgotten in that which was establish- 

 ed about the same period by the immortal Swede. 



We could here, did the limits of our article allow of it, mention many 

 eminent men, whose labours served materially to advance the science of 

 botany in the dominions of Germany, at the beginning, or during the mid- 

 dle of the eighteenth century, such as Holler, who was for a long time 

 professor of anatomy and botany at Gottingen. Schreber, author of FI. 

 Lipsiemis ; Schoeffer, who first published coloured figures of the Fungi ; 

 and Scopoli, f a native of the Tyrol ; but we must hasten to speak of the 

 state of botany nearer our own times. 



* After whom Duxbawnta is named ; and justly too ; for, besides his merits as an 

 author, he was the first to dsicover this curious moss. He was anxious, lie too tells 

 us, to call this after his father, " sed venit in mentem," he says " vulpes qui de- 

 ridebatur ab aliis, quod uvas non pro se, sed pro a;grota posceret matre." 



+ This learned man, in his admirable " Delicia: Flora: et Fauna Iiis/iluitr" has 

 made two curious mistakes, the one at Tab. xx. where the Pliy.s'is inlisliiiulis is repre- 

 sented as a new genus of Vermes, but which is nothing more than the trachea of a 

 Guinea fowl, ( Numidui melcngrh) which some racked students pretended had been 

 vomited \>y a woman in the hospital : — And again at Tab. .\xiv where a plate of in- 

 sects is dedicated, with some propriety, perhaps, to Mr Jlrnjii/nhi White, an emi- 

 nent natural history bookssllcr of London. Mr White had, however, for n sign 

 of the literary character of his shop, a large gilded head of Horace over his door in 

 11' i Street. Hence the address was, Mr B. White, nl Horace' t Head, Pleel 



