HISTORY or BOTANY. .'iO.> 



439. 



The Italians, Hermolaus Barbarus, Marcellus Virgilius, 

 Nicolaus Lconicenus, John Manardiis, and Antony Miisa 

 Brassavola, became celebrated and useful, indeed, in their 

 age, by such investigations ; but they pursued these studies 

 rather as grammarians, than as natural historians. 



The proper fathers of the later botany were Germans, who, 

 independent of the ancients, examined and made known the 

 plants of their native country. Among these, the most an- 

 cient was Otto Brunfels, schoolmaster in Strasburgh, after- 

 wards a physician, who died in 1534. His Herbarum vivae 

 Icones were published at Strasburgh, in folio, with wood cuts, 

 in 1532 and 153(i. 



To him succeeded Leonhard Fox, professor at Ingolstadt, 

 and afterwards at Tubino^en. He died in 1565. His Historia 

 Stirpium appeared at Basil, in folio, in 1542. In this work, 

 we find wood cuts, true to nature, of about four hundred 

 German plants, and here also we find the first catalogue of 

 technical terms in botany. 



Hieronymus Tragus, schoolmaster at Zweybrucken, after- 

 wards a physician at Hornbach, who died in 1554, had also 

 collected plants on the Hundsruck, the Eyfel, the Ardennes, 

 the Vogeses, on Jura, and in the countries on the Rhine. 

 His book on herbaceous plants appeared in German, at Stras- 

 burgh, in 1551. 



Valerius Cordus, also, who was taken from the world by 

 an early death, at Rome, in 1544, had carefully examined 

 the plants of Germany. His literary remains were published 

 by Conrad Gesncr, at Strasburgh, in 1561. 



This Gesner, one of the most learned and excellent men of 

 his time, was schoolmaster and corrector, afterwards physi- 

 cian and professor, at Zurich, and died in 1564. He ac- 

 quired the highest merit as a botanist, by not only collecting 

 and describing the plants of Switzerland, but also by leaving 

 behind him a great number of excellent designs, wood cuts, 

 and copperplates, of foreign plants, in which he was the first 

 wlio attended to the parts of fructification. These remams 

 canic two hundred vears afterwards into the hands of Schmidel, 



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