76 The Botanical Renaissance [ch. 



at others, he was occupied in writing or translating for 

 Rondelet, Dodoens or Plantin, or undertaking precarious 

 employment at the court of Vienna. The University of 

 Leyden finally appointed him to a professorship. It is 

 interesting to note that he paid more than one visit to 

 England, and that he was intimate with Sir Francis Drake, 

 who gave him plants from the New World. 



De l'Ecluse had a reputation for versatility scarcely 

 exceeded by that of his contemporary, the " Admirable " 

 Crichton. He is said to have had a wide knowledge of Latin, 

 Greek, French, German, Flemish, Spanish, law, philosophy, 

 history, geography, zoology, mineralogy and numismatics, 

 besides his chosen subject of botany. Since his botanical 

 d^but was made as the translator of Dodoens, we may with 

 reason look upon him as a disciple of the latter. 



The first original work de l'Ecluse produced was an 

 account of the plants which he had observed while on an 

 adventurous expedition to Spain and Portugal with two 

 pupils. This was so successful botanically that he brought 

 back two hundred new species. The description of his 

 finds was published by Plantin in 1576, under the title of 

 ' Rariorum aliquot stirpium per Hispanias observatarum 

 Historia.' Wood-blocks were engraved purposely for this 

 book (see Text-figs. 39, 59 and 98), but, for the confusion of 

 the bibliographer, some of them were also used to illustrate 

 Dodoens' work in the interval while the Spanish flora of 

 de l'Ecluse awaited publication. In 1583 appeared our 

 author's second work, which did the same service for the 

 botany of Austria and Hungary as the previous volume 

 had done for the botany of Spain. These two works, 

 together with some additional matter, were republished in 

 1 601 as the ' Rariorum plantarum historia.' In this book, 

 the species belonging to the same genus are often brought 

 together, but, beyond this, there is little attempt at sys- 

 tematic arrangement. 



De l'Ecluse was weak in the synthetic faculty, his 

 strength lying rather in his powers of observation. Cuvier 

 reckons that he added more than six hundred to the number 

 of known plants. It is characteristic of his versatile mind, 

 that his botanical interests were not confined, like those 

 of most of the early workers, to flowering plants. A 



