'32 



NATURAL SCIENCES. 



not generally recognised as true until the time of Cuvier and Brongniart. 

 Palissy was two or three hundred years in advance of the epoch in which he 

 lived, for he asserted that when the fossils were formed men and certain 

 kinds of animals did not exist ; he distinguished between the water due to 

 crytallization and the water of vegetation ; he laid down the laws of the 

 affinity of salts in the development of stones and metals ; he investigated 

 the origin of clouds, of springs, of earthquakes, of mineral or spring waters, 

 and of potable waters ; he started, in fact, the great questions of natural 

 philosophy, of organic chemistry, of mineralogy, and of agronomy. Yet 



Fig. 94. Mark of Charles Estienne, Printer at Paris, in the First Edition of his Work entitled 

 "Prsedium Kustioum." (See page 125.) 



Bernard Palissy exercised little influence upon the science of his day, and he 

 was not looked upon as more than a skilful potter. 



It is true that this period of civil and religious wars was not very favour- 

 able to the silent meditations of science, but the naturalists more especially 

 the botanists careless as to what was going on in the political world, saw 

 nothing and heard nothing of what passed outside their studies (Fig. 94). 



Towards the close of the sixteenth century there were two savants who 

 discovered the true principles as to the classification of plants. Matthias 

 Lobel, born at Lille in 1538, but who, after several long botanical expeditions, 

 settled in England, first of all arranged them into families such as the 

 grasses, the orchids, the palm tribe, and the mosses and compared the mint 

 tribe and the umbelliferous plants. Andrew Cesalpin, professor of botany at 



