INTRODUCTION TO BOTANY. 13 
others were studying botany practically in the fields, and 
endeavouring, as we already said, to reconcile the plants 
of Germany to the descriptions of Dioscorides. Brunsfel’s 
work was published in 1530, and Cordus, another writer 
on the same subject, in 1535. The learned Gesner bestowed 
part of his attention upon botany, and first proposed to 
denominate all plants which have the same flower and fruit, 
however different they may be in other respects, by the 
same common name; or, in modern lJanguage, to found 
the genera upon the fructification alone. The plants of 
Germany were, however, still further examined by Leonard 
Fuchs, a physician, and professor at Tubingen. His 
History of Plants is adorned with 510 of the most beauti- 
ful and correct outlines that have ever been cut in wood. 
The draughtsmen employed were Henry Fullmaurer and 
Albert Meyer, and the wood-engraver was Vitus Rudolph 
Speckle; all whose portraits, in half-lengths, are given at 
the end of the work, as Fuchs’, in full length, ornaments 
the back of the title. The author had good reason to be 
proud of his artists. His great error was in applying the 
names of Dioscorides to the plants of Northern Europe ; 
nor was he Jess an admirer of Hippocrates and Galen, 
whose medical writings he vigorously defended against, all 
opposers. 
Although the Great Herbal was the only botanical work 
published in England during the reign of the eighth 
Harry, much attention was given to agriculture and 
kitchen-gardening. One of the judges (Fitzherbert) did 
not disdain to write on Husbandry. A committee of privy 
council, the prototype of our present Board of Agriculture, 
was appointed to obtain slatistical accounts of the king- 
dom, Anne of Cleves, when transformed by act of Par- 
liament from the wife into the sister of Henry, endeavoured _ 
to forget the slights of the monarch in the cultivation of 
vegetables. And it is probable, that some of the kitchen- 
gardeners at Chelsea are the descendants of the Flemish 
gardeners, whiom her real brother sent over to manage her 
garden there. 
The reign of Edward the Sixth was distinguished by 
the publication of Turner’s New Herbal; in which the 
alphabetical arrangement of former authors was still fol- 
lowed. ‘Turner was born at Morpeth in Northumberland, 
and educated at Cambridge, about 1538. He complains 
much of the ignorance of natural history that then pre- 
vailed in England, even in the universities. ** Being then,” 
