78 The Botanical Renaissance [ch. 



de Batthyany. This gentleman is said to have been so 

 enthusiastic a botanist, that he set a Turkish prisoner at 

 liberty, on the condition that he should obtain plants for 

 him jfrom^ Turkey. 



De l'Ecluse seems to have been a man of wide friend- 

 ships, and his botanical correspondence was very large. 

 He did much for horticulture, and is called by his friend, 

 Marie de Brimen, Princesse de Chimay, "le pere de tous 

 les beaux Jardins de ce pays." He deserves especial 

 gratitude for one benefit of a very practical nature, namely 

 the introduction of the Potato into Germany and Austria. 

 It is worthy of note that de l'Ecluse, unlike the majority of 

 the herbalists, was not a physician, and although he laid 

 considerable stress on the properties of plants, he was not 

 preoccupied with the medical side of the subject. He 

 studied plants for their own sake, and abandoned the futile 

 effort to identify them with those mentioned by the ancients. 



The third of the trio of botanists whom we are now 

 considering is Mathias de l'Obel [de Lobel or Lobelius], 

 who was born in Flanders in 1538, and died in England, 

 at Highgate, in 16 16 (Plate VIII). He studied at Mont- 

 pelier, under Guillaume Rondelet, who, finally, bequeathed 

 to him his botanical manuscripts. Here also he became 

 acquainted with a young Provencal, Pierre Pena, with whom 

 he afterwards collaborated in botanical work. De l'Obel 

 took up medicine as his profession, and eventually became 

 physician to William the Silent, a post which he held until 

 the assassination of the Stadtholder. Later on, he and Pena 

 came to England, probably to seek a peaceful life under the 

 prosperous sway of Queen Elizabeth, which was so favour- 

 able to the arts and sciences. Their principal work was 

 dedicated to her, in terms of hyperbolic praise. De l'Obel 

 seems to have been well received in this country, for he was 

 invited to superintend the medicinal garden at Hackney, 

 belonging to Lord Zouche, and he eventually obtained the 

 title of Botanist to James I. 



De rObel's chief botanical work was the ' Stirpium 

 adversaria nova 1 ,' published in 1570, with Pena as joint 

 author. Pena does not appear to have been a botanist 



1 According to Legre", the word "Adversaria" is equivalent to "livre-journal," 

 i.e. day-book in the commercial sense. 



