L'OBEL 35 



Languedoc or the Cevennes. Sprengel^ gives a long 

 list of species which L'Obel was the first to describe. 

 L'Obel has also something to say about the Papyrus 

 antiquorum, which he had seen in the botanic garden 

 of Pisa, about Sarracenia, Tillandsia and other newly 

 imported American plants, about the wheat-trade of 

 Antwerp, the manufacture of beer and the trenching of 

 celery. Drugs of recent introduction are of course noted, 

 and many therapeutical experiments are recorded. He 

 tells with pride of plants brought at great cost to 

 Flanders from Constantinople, Greece, Italy, Asia, Africa 

 and America, and cites among the glories of his native 

 land, the eminent botanists and gardeners which it had 

 produced. The highest place is given to De L'Escluse 

 (Clusius). 



L'Obel seems to have been the first naturalist to call 

 attention to the fact that the mountain plants of warm 

 countries descend to low levels further north. His 

 words are: — "quae jugis montium calidarum regionum 

 proveniunt, eadem in planis, silvis, silvosis et depressis 

 regionum septentrionalium exeunt."^ This observation 

 of L'Obel's was the starting-point of inquiries which 

 have been pursued with ever-widening grasp to our own 

 time. Linnaeus ^ showed that alpine plants are nearly 

 the same all the world over, while Ramond* observed 

 that the zones of vegetation on high mountains may 

 answer to horizontal zones bounded by parallels of lati- 

 tude, a relation which Humboldt demonstrated on a far 

 larger scale. 



^Oeach. der Botanik, Vol. I, p. 311. 



2 Preface to Siirpium Illustrationea. ^ Phil. Bof., § 334. 



*Ramond, a naturalist of no real weight, had the honour of influencing 

 the geological speculations of Cuvier, and in onoe mentioned in Darwin's 

 Origin of Species. His Voyages au Mont-Ptrdu (1801) has some little historical 

 interest. 



