406 Aster History: CLusius 
student of law, turned from jurisprudence and became a student 
of nature. There he made acquaintance with his “ Aster Atticus 
legitimus” (Pallenis spinosa Cassini) which he says the people 
about Montpellier were in the habit of calling Ocwlus Christi ; 
«“ Aster Atticus legitimus was called Oculus Christi in the Monspel- 
lian land when I was living there,’ Clusius wrote a half century 
later. We may fancy the elder and younger plant-lovers talking 
over its yellow stars and its healing powers as they walked there, 
Rondelet praising its traditional virtues. * 
After three years in Montpellier, Clusius received his license in 
medicine in 1553 and at once began a botanical journey through 
the mountains, making observations on plants through a great part 
of southern France, Savoy and Piedmont. Here may have been 
his first sight of Aster Amellus L. and of Aster alpinus L., which 
he did not describe however till 1583 after seeing them in the 
Austrian Alps. 
At the wish of his father, Clusius returned, by way “of Basle, 
to the Netherlands. Remaining there 1555-1563, he translated into 
French, with numerous additions made by author and by trans- 
lator as collaborators, the great Flemish herbal, the Cruydeboeck 
of Dodoens, finishing it in 1557, under the name “ Histoire des 
plantes.” ¢ 
* Rondelet himself had known the plant as Aster Atticus ; for in his fragment ‘‘ De 
Succedaneis’’ (edited by Lobel from a MS. of Rondelet and published 1576 at Ant- 
werp as an appendix to his Odservationes, forming pages 657-671 of Lobel’s volume 
Plantarum historia), Rondelet remarks, p. 664, that in place of the plant ‘ Bubonium 
sive Rng vene: sive Aster Atticus ’’ some physicians use ‘‘ Antirrhinum’’ : and vice 
versa Antirrhinum,’’ still known by that name, had been said by Galen to have 
‘*the properties of Bubonium but milder’’; as Lobel r en Observationes, 221. 
Lobel, in editing this fragment, indicates by marginal insertion of ‘‘ Rondel,’’ opposite 
** Aster Atticus,’’ thatthe text means not the Aster Atticus of anybody else, Matthioli for 
example, but the Aster Atticus of ha ond valle t, 7. 2, the Aster Atticus alter of Ma tthioli. 
—It was natural that the Aster Atticus of Rondelet should not be the Aster dmellus L., 
the mountain-loving plant of Matthioli. Presumably there had been a long-current 
identification of Pallenis with Bubonion and Inguinaria widespread through both south- 
ern France and Spain, Rondelet, 1507-1566, knowing it as Bubonion and Clusius 
finding Pee calling it Bobas when he was travelling in Spain in 1564-5. 
t Issued by Jean Loé, Antwerp, 1557, in folio, according to C. Bauhin, Seguier and 
Haller, with the title, as given by Seguier, 1740, of ‘‘ Histoire des plantes de Dodonée, 
contenant la description des herbes, leurs especes, forme, noms, temperaments, vertus, 
et operations, traduite du bas Allemand en Francois par Ch, de l’Ecluse.’’ Of this rare 
work Seguier knew a copy in the library of the physician Falconet in Paris. Caspar 
Bauhin used a copy, 1623. 
