30 THE NEW BIOLOGY 



belemnites, &c., but stone-implements and even a lead- 

 pencil ! He says that this last is made of what some 

 called English antimony, set in a wooden handle. The 

 figure resembles a modern pencil-case for the waistcoat 

 pocket. 



Gesner, laborious, learned, enlightened, unselfish, ever 

 zealous to extend the knowledge of nature, had, like 

 Linnaeus two hundred years later, correspondents in 

 every country, and suggested or helped many an inquiry. 

 If somebody was wanted to take up a neglected branch 

 of natural history, or to edit the writings of a naturalist 

 who had been cut off before his time, Gesner, loaded as 

 he was by tasks of his own, was the readiest to lend a 

 helping hand. Belon, Eondelet, Aldrovandi, Valerius 

 Cordus, Caius and Turner are to be found in the long 

 list of those whom he befriended or advised. Even the 

 Congregation of the Index had recourse to his Bihlio- 

 theca for information concerning heretical authors, 

 though they ungratefully put him into the list along 

 with the rest. 



Letters of Gesner give some faint notion of what his 

 History of Plants might have done for botany. In one 

 place he explains that flower, fruit and seed afibrd better 

 indications of afiinity than leaves. It can easily be 

 perceived, he says, by the organs of fructification that 

 Staphisagria and Consolida are of kin to Aconite, &c. 

 He asks a friend to send him a drawing of a tulip-fruit 

 (the tulip was then a rarity in western Europe) to show 

 the arrangement of the seeds, which he wished to figure. 

 He recognises genera, or natural groups of species, as 

 many had done before him, and says that there are 

 hardly any herbs which do not fall into genera of two 

 or more species. The ancients had described one* 

 gentian, but he knew of ten or more. He distinguished 



