16 AsTER HIsTory 
species was fairly begun. These new Asters, so called, are of 
course not now included in the genus; the first of them that still 
remains so was perhaps Aster alpinus L., also published * by 
Clusius. 
In the next year, 1577, occurred the death of Matthioli. He 
had begun as a maintainer of the unity of Aster; he had lived to 
see two species accredited to Aster by Anguillara, by Fuchs, and 
by Gesner, and then he had adopted a second species himself; he 
had outlived the discovery of others by Gesner, and had seen the 
number rise to seven in the “ Observationes” of Lobel, by which 
time more than a dozen different plants had been figured under 
the name of aster. 
With the passing away of the great commentator on Dios- 
corides, there had passed away forever the old preéminence of 
classic dictum. The center of gravity of aster studies had swung 
over into a new realm. Observation of nature, in the way of the 
addition of new species, was now the leading impulse, a new direc- 
tion which in Aster seems to have been chiefly due to the stimulus 
imparted by Clusius. 
Clusian Aster Species —The genus grew up round the species; 
developing in the mind of the sixteenth century as if by crystalli- 
zation upon the original Greek type as the formative point, newly 
discriminated forms appearing as “Aster Atticus alpinus,” “Aster 
non Atticus,” etc. For almost 200 years, descriptions of Aster 
species increased; Bobart, in 1699, completing Morison’s “ Plan-— 
tarum historiae,’’ enumerated 48 species; Tournefort, in 1700, 
enumerated 52. Most of these species were European; the stu- 
dent of American asters will wonder that so long after parts 
of America were already the home of a considerable population, 
botanists of Europe were still issuing histories of plants in which 
there did not appear a single American Aster; as in the great 
work of Jean Bauhin and his collaborators, in 1650. But toward 
the end of the seventeenth century, 
writing, 
*In Clusius’ ** Rariorum ... per Pan Jer oth 
1583, in Caesalpino’s «* De plantis’’ and 
honiam,’’ 1583 ; also under other names, in 
in 1586 in Camerarius’ epitome of Matthioli. 
