30 FAMILIAJt GARDEN FLOWERS. 



made to the West Indies and the American continent in 

 search of plants, and in the capacity of King's Botanist 

 he published ID 1695 his first botanical work, " Descrip- 

 tion des Plantes de 1'Amerique." After his third voyage 

 he published in 1703 his "Nova Plantarum Genera/' in 

 which occurs the first description of the fuchsia, which he 

 had discovered. In this work a feature of great importance 

 is developed. Plumier dedicated about fifty of the plants 

 he discovered to eminent botanists, by adopting their 

 names as generic designations. Thus he dedicated the 

 plant before us to the memory of Leonard Fuchs, and on 

 him, therefore, we must bestow a paragraph. 



Leonardo Fuchs (or Fox) was born at Wembding, in 

 Bavaria, in the year 1501. Early in life he devoted 

 himself to learning and letters, became a convert to the 

 opinions of Luther, and in 1521 graduated as a physician 

 at Ingoldstadt. He was the first German physician whose 

 name became famous in foreign countries ; and, strange to 

 say, his fame rested chiefly on his vindication of the system 

 of medicine that prevailed among the early Greeks. He 

 was rather a herbalist than a botanist, and made great but 

 often vain profession of his knowledge of the plants of 

 Dioscorides. His works are now regarded as mere curio- 

 sities, of considerable historical importance, but valueless 

 in respect of the science they uphold and teach. The most 

 important of them is the " Historia Plantarum/' pub- 

 lished at Basle in 1542. 



But these relations do not bring the flower " home to 

 us." That was done by a sailor, about a hundred years 

 after the discovery of the plant by the learned monk 

 Plumier. The adventurous tar had brought home from 

 Chili a plant bearing flowers of a kind unknown till then 



