20 Botanists of Germany and the Netherlands [book l 



Konrad Gesner * .was the only one who bestowed a closer 

 attention on the flowers and parts of the fruits ; he figured them 

 repeatedly, and recognised their great value for the determina- 

 tion of affinity, as we learn from his expressions in his letters ; 

 but the much occupied and much harassed man died before 

 he could complete the work on plants which he had long been 

 preparing, and when in the 18th century Schmidel pub- 

 lished Gesner's figures, which meanwhile had passed through 

 various hands, the work too long delayed remained useless to a 

 science which had already outstripped it. 



It will be gathered from the above remarks, that we find 

 in these authors no approach to a system of morphology 

 founded on a comparative examination of the parts of plants, 

 and therefore no regular technical language. Still the more 

 learned among them felt the necessity of connecting the 

 words they used in describing a plant with a fixed sense, 

 of defining their conceptions ; and though their first efforts in 

 this direction were weak, they deserve notice, because they 

 show more than anything else how great has been the advance 

 in the study of nature from the 16th century to the present day. 



The first attempt to establish a botanical terminology is to 

 be found as early as 1542 in the 'Historia Stirpium ' of 

 Leonhard Fuchs 2 . Four pages at the beginning of the work 

 are thus occupied. A considerable number of words are 

 explained in alphabetical order — the mode of arrangement 

 which he followed also in describing his plants. It is difficult 



1 Konrad Gesner, born in Zurich in 1516, became after many vicissitudes 

 of fortune Professor of Natural History in his native town, and died there 

 of the plague in 1565. See Ernst Meyer, ' Geschichte der Bctanik,' iv. 



3 Leonhard Fuchs, born at Membdingen in Bavaria in 1501, was a student 

 of the classics under Reuchlin in Ingolstadt in 15 19, and became Doctor of 

 Medicine in 1524. Owing to his conversion to Protestantism he led 

 an unsettled life for some years, but was finally made Professor of 

 Medicine in Tubingen in 1535, and died there in 1566. See Meyer, 

 ' Geschichte der Botanik,' iv. 



