HISTORICAL INTEODUCTION. 



commence witt him; certainly the first clear conception of 

 genera, although much of the actual good he effected may be 

 seen less in his own works than in those of his correspondents, 

 who so largely benefitted by his labours. "We must next 

 enumerate the productions of Pietro Andrea Mattioli, usually 

 called Matthiolus, a physician of Siena, whose commentaries 

 on Dioscorides ran through more editions and were translated 

 into more languages probably than those of any other three 

 writers previous to Linnaeus. This brings us to our own 

 countryman, "William Turner, who issued his little Lihellus, 

 whilst quite a young man, in 1538 ; herein he expressly dis- 

 claims being the only or chief one skilled in botany in England, 

 mentioning "Wootton, Falconer, "Wendy, and Clement, as being 

 well qualified to write on plants, and yet producing nothing. 

 Of Turner and his writings I have given a full account else- 

 where ; I therefore pass on to notice Dalechamp's great work, 

 the Historia generalis plantarum, which came out after his 

 death, and thus suffered the fate of most works which do not 

 receive their last touches at the hands of the original writer, 

 namely, that of being negligently edited, and of having 

 the editor's mistakes too often attributed to the writer. 



Luca Ghini was the first to occupy a chair "of botany ; he 

 lectured at Bologna, and was the cause of the formation there of 

 the earliest botanic garden, to the end that he might cultivate 

 the plants he required for demonstration. Turner, who was 

 one of his disciples, styles him " reder of Dioscorides in 

 Bonony." A brilliant pupil of this early professor, Andrea 

 Cesalpini, first sketched a system of arranging plants by their 

 structural affinities, founding his principles of arrangement 

 upon the fruit and seed. 



The university of Montpellier, towards the end of the six- 

 teenth century, was specially noteworthy for the large number 

 of its students who afterwards attained eminence in various 

 departments of natural history. Rondelet was one of the 



