1910] . CURRENT LITERATURE 381 
with his Georgics and Bucolics; and the writers on agriculture whose works are 
known under the title De re rustica. While all of these writers contributed some- 
thing to botany, about all the phytography that has come to us from the ancients 
is to be found in the works of THEOPHRASTOS, DioscorIDEs, and PLINy. 
The remainder of the volume is taken up with those who have been called 
by the German writers ‘the fathers of German botany,” or “the botanical 
reformers of the 16th century.” Beginning with BruNFELS and Fucus, it is 
shown that to them is due an improved iconography, but not any reform in 
phytography. Their drawings from nature were substituted for the wretched and 
incorrect figures of the old herbals, but the accompanying descriptions were 
translations or compilations from the ancient authors. It was assumed that the 
plants of the Mediterranean region, which the old books described, grew in the 
fields and forests of Germany. Some changes were made by BRUNFELS in group- 
ing plants, foreshadowing genera more akin to those now recognized, and real 
reform in phytography was made by Bock, better known as TrAGus. He studied 
plants in the field, and those not included in the older books were described in his 
clear and graphic style. Professor GREENE regards him as the “first father of 
phytography after THEopHRAstos.” Although often paying close attention to 
the floral parts, he was still dominatéd by the idea that likeness in foliage, stem, 
and root, and sensible qualities like odor and taste, were better criteria of affinities 
than similarities in fruit and seed. 
The two remaining chapters are devoted to Eurtcrus Corpus and his son 
VALERIUs Corpus. EvRIcIvs published only one botanical work, the Botano- 
logicon, but it so fully exposed the mistake of identifying the plants of Germany 
with those of the ancient writers that a decided advance was made in botany. 
To Varertus Corpus the author assigns a high position, and from all that is 
known of his life and work he was an exceptional man. Dying at the age of 
twenty-nine, from exposure to the miasmatic climate of that part of Italy he was 
exploring in the heat of summer, it is felt that what was so well done in a life so 
short would have been greatly extended had his life been prolonged. In his 
Geschichte der Botanik, MEYER speaks of him as ‘‘a shining but fleeting phenom- 
enon,” and says ‘few have accomplished work of so many kinds and so great in 
so short a life.’ He was a lecturer on medicine, a botanical explorer, and a writer; 
and also a chemist and a mineralogist. “TOURNEFORT speaks of him as “‘the first of 
all to excel in the description of plants”; and MEYER says that “‘his descriptions 
surpassed those of all his predecessors in precision and in the clearness with which 
they were brought home to perception” (Anshaulichkeit). Professor GREENE 
outlines the orderly plan of description adopted by Corpus, and considers his 
special title to distinction to be that of ‘the inventor of the art of phytography,” 
in doing away with the need of pictures of plants, and by showing that “‘eve 
Species could be so characterized in words as to be identifiable by description 
one.” His Historia plantarum was left in manuscript and was not published 
until several years after his death. 
In these Landmarks Professor GREENE has made a very interesting and 
