BOTANY. 



9 



Stcrrebech 

 Died 1034 

 Maurice 

 Huffman. 



Menzel. 

 Horn 1622. 

 Died 1701 



Kjlberg. 



Breynes. 

 Bor'n Hi:57. 

 Died 1697 



Barrelier 

 B<jrn IBS'! 



PI-'.) son at Oxford, wlio !iad made vary great additions 

 to it. The system, however, did not find many, on 

 its becoming known, whu were disposed to act upon 

 it ; and a little reflection may indeed satisfy any per- 

 son who understands the principles of arrangement, 

 that it is of too involved a nature, and admits of too 

 great a variety of character, to allow it to be of ge- 

 neral use. But whatever may be thought of the merits 

 or defects of the system itself, it will not be denied,that 

 the author did a considerable service to botany aa a 

 science, in having brought the subject of methodical 

 distribution again into notice. And as to what con- 

 cerns his labours in other respects, we may safely 

 add, that while his great work, the Plantamm His- 

 loria Universalis Oxonicnsis, referred to above, was 

 received at first as a highly important acquisition, and 

 is still looked upon as a valuable performance, the 

 treatise which he wrote on the umbelliferous plants, 

 will ever remain a flattering testimony to his powers 

 of discrimination. 



Of the contemporaries and immediate successors 

 of Morison, the greater part did not avail themselves 

 of the advantages of method, but laboured rather to 

 promote the interests of the science in the way hither- 

 to pursued. Francis Van Sterrebech,a clergyman at 

 Antwerp, wrote a treatise of some value on the mush- 

 room tribe. Maurice Hoffman, son of Caspar already 

 mentioned, and successor to Jungermann in the pro- 

 fessorship at Altdorf, was author, among other things, 

 of two pretty able statistical surveys, the Flora; Alt- 

 dor fi nee Delicice Syhestres, which appeared in 1662, 

 and the Montis Maiiritiani in Agro Leimburgcnshim 

 Viciniie que dcscriptio Botanica, which followed in 

 1694-. Christian Menzel, a native of Brandenburg, 

 and physician to Frederic, the First, king of Prussia, 

 a man of great learning, and particularly eminent for 

 his skill in the various languages, besides writing on 

 the flora round Dantzic, and describing some plants 

 which he had gathered in the course of his travels 

 among the Alps and Apennines compiled a pinax iu 

 the manner of Bauhin ; which was published in 

 ItiS'J, under the title of Index Plantarum Mttltiliti- 

 guis ; the name of each plant being expressed in Ger- 

 man, Dutch, French, Spanish, Bohemian, Hunga- 

 rian, Polish, Danish, and Arabic. 



Peter Kylberg, a Danish botanist, wrote about the 

 same time, on the flora of his native country. James 

 Breynes, a merchant of Dantzic, but of Flemish ex- 

 traction, who was extremely fond of botanical pur- 

 suits, described, in the Exoticnrum Stirpium Centuria, 

 a work illustrated by accurate and very beautiful 

 plates, which he published at his own expense in 

 1678, and in the Prodrcmns ra riorum Plantarum, 

 which was given to the world after his death, by his 

 son, John Philip, physician at Dant/ic, a consider- 

 able ntfmber of rare plant's, which he had either found 

 cultivated in gardens, or had procured through the 

 good offices of his numerous correspondents. 



Jacob Barrelier, a Frenchman, and Paul Bocco, or 

 . Sylvius, as he was afterwards called, a Sicilian, the 

 one a Dominican, and the other a Cistertian friar, 

 travelled widely through France, Italy, Switzerland, 

 and the adjacent countries j and thereby at length 

 procured, in the result of their respective researches, 

 a valuable accession of discovery to the science. The 



VOL. IV. PART I. 



work containing the discoveries of Barrelier, wns not, H 

 indeed, brought before the public till the year 1711s * v 

 when it was edited from his manuscripts by the ce- 

 lebrated Anthony de Jtissieu, professor of botany at 

 Paris, under the title of Plantcc per Hispahiam et 

 Italiam Obscrvata:. But the discoveries of Sylvius, BOCCO, or 

 on the other hand, appeared first in the Dexriptiones Sylviuj. 

 plantarum rariorum, Sici/ia, Sfc. which was publish- Burn 1C 

 ed at Oxford, under the care of Dr Morison in 1674.; v 

 and were afterwards given more in detail, and with 

 important additions, in a work entitled, Museo di 

 piante rare delta Sici/ia, Mult/ia, Italia, e Francia, 

 which came out under the author's own eye at Ve- 

 nice in 1697. 



Olaus Rudbeck, the elder, professor of botany Olaiu 

 at Upsal, whom Haller styles Viriim vasti higrnit, J" r d n ,g\,' rti 

 et in magnis operibus, pertinadter laboriosum, be- j^j 170? 

 sides writing some other things of less moment, em- 

 ployed himself many years, in concert with his son 

 and successor in the professorship, in preparing a 

 work of great labour in twelve folio volumes, which 

 he entitled, Campi Elysii. But when it was now on 

 the point of being completed, and a considerable 

 part of it was even ready lor publication, he had the 

 misfortune to lose it almost wholly, along with his 

 Herbarium, and about 10 or 11,000 elegant cuts, in 

 the fire that, in 1702, laid that city in ashes; a cir- 

 cumstance which appears to have hastened his death, 

 as that event took place within a few months after. 



Henry Van Rhude Van Drakenstein, a gentleman Draken- 

 who has a claim to be mentioned with particular ho- stem. 



nour among the botanists of this period, availed him- Bor " '* 



.--..*>.. , n r 1. Died 1041 



self of his situation and influence as governor or toe 



Dutch settlements in the East Indies, to collect a 

 great many rare plants of that part of the world, and 

 especially of the Malabar coast, where he had his 

 principal residence. Of these he procured very beau- 

 tiful drawings by the first artists whom he could find 

 in India ; and having at the same time spared no 

 trouble or expense to get them accurately examined, 

 and to ascertain what was known to the natives with 

 regard to their medicinal and oeconomical uses, he 

 returned at length to Europe with the design of lay- 

 ing the fruit of his labours before the world in a 

 style of magnificence worthy of the subject. On 

 his arriving and settling in his native country, accord- 

 ingly, he submitted his own manuscripts, and those 

 of his Indian assistants, to the inspection of men of 

 ability, wbxmi he employed as editors ; and with their 

 aid he succeeded so well, that between the year 

 1676, and the time of his death, in 1691, he was 

 enabled to publish ten folio volumes, and two more 

 being added shortly afterwards, completed his design, 

 and thereby put the world in full possession of the 

 Hortiis Malabaricus, a work on exotic botany, which, 

 if we look either to the information contained in it, 

 or to the singular elegance and accuracy of the plates 

 by which it is illustrated, is perhaps the most splendid 

 and valuable which has hitherto appeared. 



John Commelyn, professor of botany at Amster- John 

 dam, besides drawing up a catalogue of the flora of Commelyii. 

 Holland, and taking a principal share in conducting 

 the publication of the preceding work, by furnishing 

 it with synonymes and a commentary, pursued other- 

 wise nearly the same course of study with Van Rhude, 



1G9 -' 



