356 Aster History; Corpus 
at Wittenberg, he turned as Meyer remarks from the ancients to 
nature herself, and roamed in search of plants and minerals over 
the mountains of Middle Germany, especially the Erzgebirge, the 
Hartz and the Thuringerwald. Perhaps it was first in these jour- 
neys that he found, “on the mountains about Jena,” as he says,* 
twenty years or more before its famed university was founded, 
the wild Aster Atticus growing in its violet and yellow, as he 
declares with much positiveness in his notes on Dioscorides. Pos- 
sibly it was earlier still, and may have been while still a student at 
Wittenberg, from whence a walk to Jena was but a trip of some 
fifty miles. 
Possibly it was about the time of his attendance at Wittenberg, 
in 1539, when he listened with his friend Crato to Melancthon 
lecturing upon Nicander. At all events it seems to have been the 
first modern discovery of apparently genuine Aster Atticus that 
we know, unless it was anticipated by that of Fuchs, who pub- 
lished his first genuine identification in 1542, and must have made 
it some time before, text not only being written but the intervals for 
the painters and the engraver and the presswork, all to be deducted 
from his date of 1542. So far as appears, Valerius Cordus } and 
Fuchs both deserve the credit of independent discovery of the 
wild — and independent identification with the plant of Dios- 
I quote all which Cordus has to say of Aster: “ Astera Atticum Arabum inter- 
pretes, et Pandectarum autor Matthaeus Sylvaticus, cum Eryngio confundunt, sed foedo 
errore. Sunt enim diversissimi generis herbae. Ruellius quoque Astera Atticum non 
recte indicat, quamvis non suam, sed aliorum de hac herba opinionem ponit. *8° 
autem scio me verum Aster Atticum in montibus circa Jenam invenisse. Non enim 
melius historiae convenire posset, tam exquisité respondent descriptiont wna ejus 
eee 
endum est. Hoc enim alia exemplaria et ipsa floris figura testantur. Media namque 
oris pars luteam habet colorem, circa quam parva et fea rea foliola, ut 
meli floribus videmus, disposita sunt, quo sit ut pw eo et’ luteo simul colore Ane 
flos describatur.’’ Valerius Cordus’ ‘* Annotationes in. ner inner 4, cv (in Riviow 
Dioscorides, 1549, p. 515, ex 5ib/. Colu u.). 
+ In 1558, 
ordus gave three lecture courses at Wittenberg on Dioscorides that W 
Successful that even older men attended them, as Professor Andreas Auriae 
Konigsberg ; Meyer, 4: 387. 
od 
