BOTANY. 



' 



Johnson. 

 Died Hi '14. 



I'.irlcm-im. 

 Born 1561. 



Bontiiis. 

 A. U. 1642. 



PaulUs. 

 Born 1603. 

 Died 1680 



Piso. 



Marcgraf. 

 Born 1610. 

 Jied 1644. 



\.D. 1651 



year* afterwards, John CVrnutus, who was also a 

 physician at Pans,publislicil a work, embracing clurlly 

 some account of plants which had born discovered in 

 Canada and the adjacent parts of North AIIHTH .1. 

 And about the same time, Thomas Johnson, and John 

 Parkinson, apothecaries, and countrymen of our own, 

 who had in other respects deserved well of th science, 

 completed, each of them, a work of a general nature : 

 That by Johnson, who eventually lost his life in the 

 civil wars, in which he had the command of a company, 

 appeared under the title of The Herbal, or general 

 History of Plants gathered by John Gerard, enlar- 

 ged and amended ; and that by Parkinson, (publish- 

 ed first in 1640), under the title of Theatrum Bota- 

 tanicum, or an Herbal of great Extent. They were 

 both the result of much industry, and formed, in the 

 opinion of the best judges, an extensive and accurate 

 compendium of all that was then known of botany. 



In 164>J, Bontius, a Dutchman, who had long 

 practised medicine at Batavia, in the island of Java, 

 published a book, entitled De Medicina Indorum, con- 

 taining some account of various medicinal and aromatic 

 plants of that part of the world, accompanied with fi- 

 gures, among which we find, for the first time, a pretty 

 good delineation of the tea shrub. Six years after- 

 wards, Simon Paullus, professor at Copenhagen, a 

 learned and entertaining writer, who had already fa- 

 voured the world with a peculiar, but able, perform- 

 ance, called Qtiadntpartittim Botanicum, in which 

 plants were distributed alphabetically into four divi- 

 sions according to the seasons of the year, produced 

 his Flora Danica, the rudiment, if we may say so, of 

 those greater works which have since appeared on 

 the botany of Denmark. The Historia Naturalis 

 Brasilia?, of Piso and Marcgraf, a work of consider- 

 able information, and the first catalogue of the plants 

 cultivated in the garden which had been lately found- 

 ed at Oxford by the Earl of Danby, drawn up by 

 the elder Bobart, were published in the course of 

 the same year. And in 1651, appeared at length, 

 the first European edition of Hernandez's Natural 

 History of Mexico, concerning which Dr Haller, in 

 the Bibliotheca Botanica, already referred to, expreses 

 himself thus : " Roma: demum anno 1651, edita 

 est Nova Plantarum ammalium et mineralium Regni 

 Mexicani historia ; non quidem Fernandi longius opus, 

 sed Epitome in x. libros a Nardo Antonio Reecho 

 contracta et Latina versa. Ipsum opus, et icones a 

 Fernando paratac, in Monasterii Escurialis incendio 

 perierunt. Hoc primum justae magnitudinis opus 

 American calidioris thesauros Europzis aperuit. De- 

 scriptio brevis, et non satis botanica ; vires medicaj 

 Paulo fusius traditae, icones non mals, non tamen ut 

 cliaracteres specierum agnoscas, nomina Mexicana. 

 Plantas ipsse noblissimx, medicatas et cornarias, ple- 

 rceque ne hoc quidem aevo satis cognitae. In uti- 

 lioribus stirpibus Mayz, Aloe, auctor uberior est. 

 Octo primi libri ad rem herbariam pertinent, reliqui 

 ad historiam animalium et minerarum." 



Of the remaining botanists of this period, extending 

 somewhat beyond the year 1670, which we have al- 

 ready characterised, as one, of the least eventful pe- 

 riods in the history of the science, we may take notice, 

 in passing, of Joachim Burser, a native of Lusatia, 

 and the pupil of Caspar Bauhin, who travelled widely 



I.oesucl. 

 Born l<><>7 

 Died 1035. 



over Europe, and ' made a very large collection of History, 

 specimens, which arc still preserved at Upaal, where 

 a catalogue of them was drawn up by Peter Martin, 

 about the year 1724, under the eye of Linnxus ; of 

 John Locssel, professor at Konigsberg, who wrote a 

 synopsis, or enumeration of the plants growing wild 

 in Prussia, which, though not of any great import- 

 ance in itself, became eventually the ground-work of 

 a valuable statistical performance, the Flora 



Gotsched. 



Grisley. 



EMiol/.. 



Horn 1623. 



Died 1688. 



of Gotsched, his successor in the professorship ; of 

 George Grisley, author of the Virularium Lusitani- 

 cmn ; and of John Sigismund Elsholy., physician to 

 the Elector Frederic William of Prussia, who wrote 

 the first catalogue of the plants that are indigenous 

 in the Mark Brandenburg, which he published under 

 the name of Flora Marchica. ' 



There is, however, one botanist of this period, 

 whom it would be a matter of injustice in us to pass 

 over slightly ; we mean Joachim Jung, a native of 

 Lubeck, who was some time professor at Helmstaedt, 

 and afterwards rector of the academy at Hamburgh, 

 where he died in 1657. The merits of this gentle- 

 man, if we look either to the powers of mind evinced 

 by his writings, or the effect which these writings 

 may be supposed to have had on the state of the 

 science, provided they had been more extensively- 

 known and attended to, naturally single him out, 

 among his contemporaries, as an object of notice. And 

 we shall therefore not hesitate to quote, at some 

 length, the opinion of two very competent judges 

 with respect to him. Haller, to whose enlightened 

 decision in these matters we have more than once had 

 occasion to appeal, speaking of that part of his work, 

 entitled, Doxoscopice Physical Minores, which treats 

 of plants, expresses himself thus: " Ostendit primus, 

 ut puto, per exempla, arbores a reliquis stirpibus non 

 bene divelli. Refutat discrimina a colore, sapore et 

 odore sumta; praefert ea, quae repetuntur a foliis. De 

 nominibus critice agit, et multa eorum prxcepit, quae 

 Linnaeus repetit. Recta separat cognomines plantas, 

 quarum fabrica diversa est, et in eo studio plurimum 

 laborat, quo tempore nemo de his subtilitatibus quae- 

 rebat." Speaking afterwards of his Isagoge Phytos- 

 copica, a work, which was first edited by Vagetius 

 in 1679, he adds : " Pleno, etsi brevi compendio, 

 novas dat definitiones partium plantse, et discrimina 

 in quaque parte, ut in folio accurate definit, turn in 

 caule, calyce. Flores nudos distinguit ab iis, quibus 

 calyx est. In flore accuratior est, et plerasque natu- 

 rales nuperorum classes praevidit, stamina, ante Jun- 

 gium neglecta, accurate secundum dotes suas omnes 

 contemplatus : sed neque numerum neglexit. Ple- 

 rosque flores isostemones esse vidit, diplostemones 

 non ignoravit, neque syngenesiam ; sic in tubas, seu 

 styli, numero, fabricam, cornubus curiosus est ; flores 

 fructui incidentes et circumpositos, gymnomonosper- 

 mos aut sexu distinctos minime prastervidit. Meiitis 

 ergo suis laudes, debet, quae passim in eum profun- 

 duntur, etiam ex Brittania, in qua plurimum defini- 

 tionibus Jungianis Rajus usus est." Professor Wil- 

 denow, the other botanist referred to, delivering his 

 opinion substantially to the same purpose, says, " In 

 his works he shews a great and extensive knowledge 

 of nature. His remarks on the vegetable kingdom 

 are just ; and what he says on terminology, and on 



Jung. 

 Born 1.5S7. 

 Died 1657. 



