AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST. 139 
of us; for we have been taught, often enough by definite precept, 
and always and everywhere by implication, that scientific botany 
had no being until 150, or at farthest 200 years ago. 
After the time of Theophrastus the most notable epoch in the 
advance of botany was that inaugurated in the first half of the 
sixteenth century ; a movement in which certain German professors 
and physicians had a conspicuous part. ‘These are Brunfels, who 
lived between 1464 and 1534, Fuchs, 1501-1566, Tragus, 1498- 
1554, and Valerius Cordus 1515-1544. The German historians of 
botany, three or four of them, have designated this quartette of 
celebrities the German Fathers of Botany. This title is conceded 
them, though with some reluctance by the author of the new 
Landmarks; or, if not exactly with reluctance, at least with some 
discernment ; for the four celebrities, by the careful analysis of the 
work of each, are seen to fall into two rather distinct categories, so 
that to Brunfels and Fuchs there is accorded the title of German 
Fathers of plant Iconography only, while Tragus and Cordus only 
are accredited as German Fathers of Botany. It is a piece of 
discrimination that is new; and it amounts to a judgment of the 
comparative merits of the four which is quite opposite of that to 
which German historians themselves had arrived ; for these almost 
with one accord make of Brunfels and Fuchs the greatest promoters 
of botany, holding Tragus and Cordus in less esteem. But in truth, 
Brunfels and Fuchs did little more than employ excellent artists to 
ancient Greeks and Romans. But by virtue of the engravings 
representing some hundreds of plants with a faithfulness to nature 
which was a new thing in the world, the two folios, that of Brunfels 
in 1532 and Fuchs in 1542, were immediately successful, immensely 
fostering a new interest in plants, and this not so much, it may be, 
- among the learned, as among the common people and the illiterate ; 
for not even the rudiments of an education are requisite for the 
identification of an herb or tree if comparison can be made with a 
ood figure, and there is no need of becoming able to read and 
understand the description. The two were great popularizers of 
plant knowledge, at the time ; their folios were financially successful; 
matters which, after all, do not necessarily make very much for the 
advancement of botany as a science 
Quite the opposite of this were the minds and the works of 
