XXIV INTRODUCTION. 



an abiding monument of the first age of 

 botanical Revival : — Commentarii 8fc. Sfc. 

 post diversarum editionum collationetn 

 infinitis locis aucti 1598. The period 

 covered by the reiga of Matthiolus has 

 been recognised as that in which Botany 

 took up an independent position as a 

 Science apart from Medicine. 



The middle and latter half of the six- 

 teenth century saw the second stage of this 

 Revival J a stage which has been aptly de- 

 scribed as that of the Fathers of Botanical 

 Science. Already, before the race of the 

 Commentators was fully run, a new school 

 of botanists was rising, who though by no 

 means emancipated from the authority of 

 Dioscorides, yet began in earnest to ob- 

 serve for themselves, to see plants with 

 curious and attentive eyes, and dili- 

 gently to make drawings of them. No- 

 where do we perceive a more genial 

 dehght in Nature. To this set belong 

 Otto Brunfels of Strasburg; Leonard 

 Fuchs^ who (as Hallam says) has secured 

 a verdant immortality in the well-known 

 Fuchsia ; William Turner, twice exiled for 



