1 8 Botanists of Germany and the Netherlands [Book i. 



introduce into his work as many plants unknown till that time 

 or unnoticed as he possibly could, and the number of descrip- 

 tions of individual forms mounted rapidly up ; in Fuchs in 

 1542 we find about five hundred species described and figured, 

 but in 1623 the number of species as enumerated by Kaspar 

 Bauhin had risen to six thousand. As the botanists were 

 spread over a large part of Germany, Fuchs in Bavaria and after- 

 wards at Tubingen, Bock on the middle Rhine, KonradGesner 

 at Zurich, Dodoens and de l'Obel in the Netherlands, a terri- 

 tory of considerable extent was thus examined ; it was enlarged 

 by the contributions which travellers brought or transmitted 

 to the botanists, and de l'Ecluse especially traversed a large 

 part of Germany and Hungary and even of Spain, and eagerly 

 collected and described the plants of those countries. During 

 this period also the number of known plants was increased 

 from Italy, partly by the exertions of Italian botanists, such as 

 Mattioli, and partly by travelling Germans. The first flora of 

 the Thiiringer-Wald was written by Thai, but not published 

 till after his death in 1588. Botanical gardens even, though in 

 more modest form than in our day, were already helping in the 

 1 6th century to add to the knowledge of plants ; the first were 

 formed in Italy, as at Padua in 1545, at Pisa in 1547, at 

 Bologna in 1567 under Aldrovandi, afterwards under Cesalpino. 

 Soon similar collections of living plants were made in the 

 . north ; in 1577 a botanic garden was founded at Leyden, over 

 which de l'Ecluse long presided, in 1593 at Heidelberg and at 

 Montpellier ; in the course of the next century the number of 

 these gardens was considerably increased. 



The preserving of dried plants, the formation of the collec- 

 tions which we now call herbaria, dates from the 1 6th century ; 

 at that time however the word herbarium meant a book of 

 plants. In this matter also the Italians led the way. Accord- 

 ing to Ernst Meyer, Luca Ghini seems to have been the first 

 who made use of dried plants for scientific purposes, and his 

 two pupils Aldrovandi and Cesalpino are said to have formed 



