NATURAL SCIENCES. 133 







Pisa, compared the process of generation in animals to the seed of plants, 

 distinguishing male plants by their stamen, and considering the plants which 

 yielded seed as female. He further divided plants into fifteen classes, with 

 male and female genders in each. To Cesalpin, therefore, belongs the honour 

 of having invented the first system of botany, a branch of natural history 

 which was studied very eagerly, and the development and progress of which 

 were materially assisted by the numerous exploring expeditions all over the 

 globe (Fig. Q4a). 



How important were these conquests of science may be gathered by 

 examining the two thousand six hundred wood plates in the " Histoire 

 generate des Plantes," written in French, after the notes of Jacques Dale- 

 champ, and the two thousand five hundred plates in the botanical treatise 

 of the Alsatian Jacques-Theodore Tabernsoniontanus, written in German, and 

 published in 1588-90. At that time the rage was for bulky volumes with 

 abundant illustrations, especially in regard to natural history ; and yet, when 

 Dr. Francis Hernandez was ordered by Philip II., to whom he had been 

 acting as physician, to collect in one volume all the animal, vegetable, and 

 mineral productions of Mexico, he could not find during his lifetime a 

 publisher who would engrave the twelve hundred figures which he had had 

 painted at a cost of sixty thousand ducats. The engravings and publications 

 on natural history which Theodore de Bry and his sons executed at Frank- 

 fort had more success when they came out in the splendid collection known 

 to bibliographists as the "Grands et Petits Voyages." 



Fig. 95. The Phoenix rising from his Ashes. Fac-simile of a Wood Engraving in the 

 Latin Edition of Pliny (Frankfort. 1602, in folio). 



