30 FAMILIAR GARDEN FLOWERS, 
made to the West Indies and the American continent in 
search of plants, and in the capacity of King’s Botanist 
he published ip 1695 his first botanical work, “ Descrip- 
tion des Plantes de ?Amerique.” After his third voyage 
he published in 1703 his “Nova Plantarum Genera,” in 
which occurs the first description of the fuchsia, which he 
had discovered. In this work a feature of great importance 
is developed. Plumier dedicated about fifty of the plants 
he discovered to eminent botanists, by adopting their 
names as generic designations. Thus he dedicated the 
plant before us to the memory,of Leonard Fuchs, and on 
him, therefore, we must bestow a paragraph. 
Leonardo Fuchs (or Fox) was born at Wembding, in 
Bavaria, in the year 1501. Early in life he devoted 
himself to learning and letters, became a convert to the 
opinions of Luther, and in 1521 graduated as a physician 
at Ingoldstadt. He was the first German physician whose 
name became famous in foreign countries; and, strange to 
say, his fame rested chiefly on his vindication of the system 
of medicine that prevailed among the early Greeks. He 
was rather a herbalist than a botanist, and made great but 
often vain profession of bis knowledge of the plants of 
Dioscorides. His works are now regarded as mere curio- 
sities, of considerable historical importance, but valueless 
in respect of the science they uphold and teach. The most 
important of them is the “ Historia Plantarum,” pub- 
lished at Basle in 1542. 
But these relations do not bring the flower “home to 
us’? That was done by a sailor, about a hundred years 
after the discovery of the plant by the learned monk 
Plumier. The adventurous tar had broneht home from 
Chili a plant bearing flowers of a kind unknown till then 
