72 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 



CLUSIUS, CONSIDERED AS A STUDENT OF EXOTIC 

 NATURAL HISTORY 



Charles de L'Escluse, better known by his Latin 

 name of Clusius (1526-1609), was a Fleming, who made 

 it one of the occupations of his long and busy life to 

 translate and publish the narratives of travellers and 

 collectors in distant lands. He had studied in several 

 universities, pursued all the principal branches of learn- 

 ing then cultivated, and searched the wilder parts of 

 western and central Europe for rare plants. He had 

 lived at Montpellier in the house of the eminent 

 naturalist Eondelet, and had been encouraged by him 

 to devote himself to botany and zoology, had directed 

 the imperial botanic garden in Vienna, and had been 

 the intimate associate of L'Obel and Dodoens, besides 

 keeping up a correspondence with Busbecq, Gesner and 

 many other men of note. During the latter half of his 

 life he was the great centre of botanical information. 

 Serious troubles, arising partly from his Protestant 

 faith, and partly from an extraordinary proneness to 

 fracture and dislocation of the limbs, did not spoil his 

 power of work. His last years were spent in a quiet 

 professorship at Leyden. 



The two books cited ^ contain the most important 

 results of the labours of Clusius. Here we can read 

 the accounts which early Spanish or Portuguese travellers 

 and residents in the East or West Indies had given of 

 the fruit-eating bat, three-banded and six-banded arma- 

 dillos, the sloth and pangolin, the sperm-whale, the 

 manatee, the cassowary, dodo and penguin, humming- 



^ Rariorum Plantarum Hiatoria. Fol. Antwerp. 1601. Exoticorum libri 

 decern, quihus animcdium, plantarum, aromatum, aliorumque peregrinorum 

 fructuum historian descrihuntur : item Petri Bellonii observationes, eodem Car^ 

 Chisii interprete. Fol. Antwerp. 1605. 



