24 PERIOD I. 



woodcuts, in which we can make out a giraffe and a 

 long-tailed macaque. 



The geographical discoveries of the sixteenth century 

 gave men for the first time a fairly complete notion of 

 the planet which they inhabit. Circumnavigators 

 proved that it is really a globe. Maps of the world, 

 wonderfully exact considering the novelty of the infor- 

 mation which they embodied, were engraved as early as 

 1507. The explorers of America busied themselves not 

 only with the preparation of charts, the conquest of 

 Mexico and Peru, the search for gold, and the spread of 

 the true faith, but also with the strange animals and 

 plants which they saw ; and the news which they 

 brought back was eagerly received in Europe. Queen 

 Isabella charged Columbus, when he set out for his 

 second voyage, to bring her a collection of bird-skins ; 

 but this may be rather a proof of her love of mil- 

 linery than of her interest in natural history. Pope 

 Leo X. liked to read to his sister and the cardinals the 

 Decades of Peter Martyr Anglerius,^ in which the 

 productions of the New World are described. The 

 opossum, sloth, and ant-eater, the humming-bird, 

 macaw, and toucan, the boa, monitor, and iguana, were 

 made known for the first time. Potatoes and maize 

 began to be cultivated in the south of Europe, the 

 tomato was a well-known garden plant, the prickly 

 pear was spreading along the shores of the Medi- 

 terranean, and tobacco was largely imported. By the 

 end of the seventeenth century Mirabilis and the garden 

 Tropaeolum had been brought from Peru, the so-called 

 African marigold from Mexico, and sunflowers from 

 North America. More than a hundred years had still 



* Letter of Peter Martyr, Dec. 26, 1 515. 



