1 }- FLOWERS OF THE MELD AND FOREST. 



Zouch, at Hackney, near London. He was subsequently appointed 

 botanist and physician to King James the First. He was the 

 author of several voluminous works on botany, all of which were 

 profusely illustrated. He projected a vast botanical cyclopaedia 

 and prepared a portion of it, which was edited and published half 

 a century after his death by Parkinson. It is said that the idea 

 of natural families among plants may be found in Lobel's works. 



"The illustrations of Lobel's works can scarcely be recognized 

 now as belonging to the plants for which they were intended." 

 And, in the light of this fact, "it is amusing," says Prof. Meehan, 

 " to find Lobel complaining that the cuts illustrating the work of 

 his predecessor, Mathiolus, are so unlike nature, that he thinks 

 this early author must have drawn his pictures in many cases 

 from his imagination." 



One may judge of the estimation in which he and his works 

 were held by later botanists, by the fact that it was nearly a 

 century after his death that Plumier named for him this im- 

 portant and interesting genus of plants. We first hear of the 

 Cardinal-flower in Parkinson's " Herbel," published in England 

 about 1630. He says that he had the root of the plant from 

 France, it having been sent over from the New World by the 

 French who had settled in Canada. It is therefore probable 

 thac our Cardinal-flower was among the earliest of our native 

 plants to be sent to the Old World, and to receive the admiring 

 attention of botanists there. It no doubt got its popular name 

 in France, as Parkinson seems to say, a name which we can 

 easily suppose was suggested by the resemblance of its brilliant 

 color to the scarlet hat and cassock of a cardinal of the Roman 

 Catholic Church. Parkinson calls it "a very brave" plant, referring, 



