O T A N Y. 



Hi.tory. 



Leonard 

 Kauwnlll". 

 Died 15!)6. 



Dale- 



thailhp. 

 Pied 1587. 



.Camen- 

 nu9. 



Born 1534 

 Died 1598. 



sulea together, as anemone, poppy, and hellebore ; 

 aiul tlic last comprehended the terns, flags, mosses, 

 and mushrooms. 



Such was the method proposed by C;csalpinu3, in 

 order to facilitate the study of the vegetable king- 

 dom : and a.i it was both the first attempt of the 

 kind, and likewise possessed of considerable merit, 

 one should have thought that, on its being made 

 known, it would naturally have drawn very general 

 attention. The fact was, however, otherwise ; for it 

 ceased to be thought of almost as soon as it was pub- 

 lished. And for a century afterwards, the science 

 was indebted for its advancement, as heretofore, to the 

 exertions of those, who employed themselves in dis- 

 covering new plants, or in giving the world a more 

 accurate delineation of the specific characters of such 

 as were known. 



About the time when Cxsalpinus published the 

 book De Plantis, containing his system, Leonard 

 Rauwolff, a celebrated German, who had travelled 

 very extensively through Syria, Palestine, Mesopota- 

 mia, Arabia, and Egypt, between the years 1573, 

 and 1575, and who died in 1596 in the capacity of 

 physician to the Austrian army, gave the public a 

 very excellent account of his travels, embracing, 

 among other things, descriptions of several rare plants, 

 which he had gathered in them. 



Four years afterwards appeared a work in 2 vols. 

 folio, entitled Historic! Generalis Plant arum, in 

 which an attempt was made for the first time, to com- 

 bine the discoveries of preceding botanists, and to 

 give some connected account of the whole. It had 

 been chiefly compiled by James Dalechamp, a native 

 of Caen, in Normandy, and physician at Lyons ; a 

 man of indefatigable industry, who had made it a 

 leading subject of attention for thirty years, and who 

 had himself gathered many plants on the Alps, and 

 in Switzerland, as well as in the contiguous parts of 

 France, which he meant to describe in it : but as he 

 was somehow prevented from going on with it him- 

 self, the task of completing it was first committed to 

 John Bauhin, whom we shall immediately have occa- 

 sion to notice; and on his retiring into Switzer- 

 land soon afterwards, on account of religion, to John 

 Molinreus, or Moulins, an accomplished physician and 

 naturalist, who also resided at Lyons. It was not 

 however published till after the death both of Mou- 

 lins and Dalechamp ; and, of course, although it is 

 doubtless a compilation of no small merit, so far as 

 research and industry are concerned, it is not without 

 much of that incorrectness and repetition which we 

 might expect in a work that, besides being the first 

 of the kind, and the production, too, of various au- 

 thors, had not the advantage of being finally com- 

 pleted and published under the inspection of any of 

 them. 



Joachim Camerarius, a celebrated German, who 

 had travelled widely through Italy, where he took 

 the degree of doctor of medicine ; and James Theo- 

 dore Tabernsemontanus, an ative of Deux Fonts, in 

 France, the pupil of Tragus, and latterly physician 

 to the Elector Palatine at Heidelberg, contributed, 

 about the same time with Dalechamp and Moulins, 

 to promote the interests of botany by their valuable 

 labours. The merit of Camerarius lay chiefly in his 



favouring the world with the tlortus MeJicus et 

 P/ulotoptttClU, a publication extracted for the most 

 part from the writings and MSS. of preceding botan- 

 ists j but particularly from the MSS. of Gesner, 

 which he had the good fortune to purchase along 

 with his collection of cuts, to the number of 2.500 ; 

 and in his publishing new editions of the Epitome of 

 Matthiolua, and of one or two other works, enriched 

 with many excellent figures, partly executed by him- 

 self, and partly taken from the collection of Gesner, 

 and with much useful information as to the names, 

 places of growth, and medical virtues of the plants, 

 which were treated of in them. The merit of Ta- 

 bernaemontanus, on the other hand, consisted in'his la- 

 bouring somewhat in the way of Dalechamp, for thirty- 

 six years, as we are informed by Haller, to prepare 

 a general history of plants, illustrated with figures ; 

 which he at length brought well on to a conclusion, 

 though he lived only to publish the 1st vol. of it; the 

 second appearing in 1590, under the auspices of Dr 

 Nicholas Braun, who had made several additions to it. 

 Nor can we forbear to connect with the memory of 

 these two botanists, the name of a contemporary au- 

 thor, Dr John Thalius, physician at Nordhausen,^who 

 surveyed the Hercynian Forest with much attention, 

 and afterwards communicated his discoveries in a 

 treatise entitled, Sylva Hercynia, which was first pub- 

 lished along vtith the Hortus Medicus of Camerarius. 



Shortly after the time we are speaking of, Prosper 

 Alpinus, an eminent Venetian, who was successively 

 physician at Venice and Genoa, and towards the close 

 of his life, which happened in 1617, professor of bo- 

 tany in the university of Padua, performed an accep- 

 table service by writing on the plants of Egypt, a 

 country which he had been led to visit, from attach- 

 ment to his favourite study, and in which he had 

 spent the greater part of four years. Our country- 

 man Gerard, a native of Namptwich, in Cheshire, 

 proceeded also with much diligence, and no small 

 degree of ability, to complete and publish his Her- 

 Leu, which was long after appealed to as a sort of 

 standard book among English botanists; Pona, an 

 apothecary of Verona, in Italy, made that botanical 

 survey of Mount Baldo, of which some account was 

 first given to the world in Clusiiis's history of plants, 

 under the title of Iter Montis Baldi, in the year 1601; 

 and, to say nothing of several other sources of infor- 

 mation, we may add, that botanical knowledge began 

 about this time to receive very important accessions 

 from the researches of a few, such as Herrera, and 

 the D'Acostas, whom curiosity or interest had led to 

 visit the newly discovered countries of America and 

 the East Indies. 



The most eminent botanists of this period, were, 

 however, doubtless, the two brothers John and 

 Caspar Bauhin, natives of Lyons : of whom the 

 former died in 1613, at Mumpelgard, as physician 

 to the Duke of Wurtemberg ; and the latter in 

 1624 at Basle, in Switzerland, where he had obtain- 

 ed a professorship. They both inherited from na- 

 ture a strong predilection for the study of plants ; 

 and the effect which their skill and assiduity had 

 eventually on the state of the science, was such, that 

 Haller has dated one of the periods of its history 

 from the time when they flourished. John, the dis- 



History. 



Tabcnue- 

 montatmi. 

 Uied 



Alpinu*. 

 Born 1553. 

 Died 1S17. 



Gerard. 

 Born 1545. 

 Died 160T. 



Pona. 



Hcrrera. 

 ,,, . 



John ami 

 Caspar 



