CLusius n 



birds and birds of Paradise, the chimsera, diodon, 

 tetrodon and ostracion, the king-crab and gorgonia, 

 the banyan, mace, nutmeg, spice-clove, cinnamon, 

 pepper, lac, the Egyptian lotus (Nelumbium), the coco- 

 nut, pine-apple, vanilla, arnotto, capsicum, copal and 

 tobacco, besides foreign drugs, such as aloes, assafetida, 

 sarsaparilla, balsam of tolu, castor-oil and opium. His 

 descriptions are often accompanied by woodcuts, which 

 give a fair notion of the objects. 



The diligence of Clusius was often rewarded by un- 

 expected and highly curious facts. In his last years 

 especially, residence in Holland, then beginning to send 

 out ships to the Far East, gave him excellent oppor- 

 tunities of collecting information, but he had been long 

 before known throughout Europe as a man learned in 

 every branch of natural history. A Portuguese physician, 

 Christobal Acosta, who had resided at Goa, published 

 a description of the sensitive plant, which Clusius trans- 

 lated, adding a figure taken from a dried specimen 

 brought by the Earl of Cumberland from the island 

 " D. Joannis a portu nuncupata." ^ Another time he 

 was disappointed by the death at sea of a live sloth, 

 shipped to Amsterdam, but managed to draw or procure 

 a drawing of the carcase ; which he helped out by the 

 description of Oviedo ; it is not surprising that his 

 figure is hardly recognisable. For the sperm-whale he 

 had to trust to a figure given by a Spanish friar (in 

 a catechism !) and to a drawing of a specimen cast up 

 on the Dutch coast.^ A squadron of eight ships, com- 

 manded by Van Neck, sailed from Holland to the East 



^ This island was Cuba, named by Columbus after the son of Ferdinand and 

 Isabella, the infante Juan. 



2 The same whale, apparently, reappears in Vissohor's Piscium Vivct Icones 

 (16.34) and in Jonston {De Piscihus et Cetis, 1650, pi. XLII), but the point of 

 view differs a little from that of Clusius' figure. 



