LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE I 97 



Barbaras, Marcellus Virgilius, Ruellius, and others who, through 

 corrected texts and Latin versions of the Greek fathers, first 

 placed them at the service of the botanists of every country. He 

 takes pains to defend them one and all against aspersions that have 

 been cast upon their works by men incompetent to criticise them, 

 and recommends the study of them to all. 



When, in their turn, his own countrymen and contemporaries, 

 Brunfelsius, Cordus, Tragus, come up for mention, it is always 

 most respectful and even honorable mention; and this despite the 

 fact that among them there is a rival or two whom he fears, and 

 has good reason to fear, still is he solicitous to be just to each, 

 and to speak out the favorable things concerning their work which 

 may be said. 



A representation which he makes in this preface, of the low 

 estate into which the pharmacy of his time had fallen, I must in 

 substance reproduce. "The times once were when not only great 

 philosophers and poets but kings and princes both investigated 

 plants, and favored others so occupied. But in our day even the 

 physicians are so much averse to that kind of study that you will 

 hardly find one among a hundred of them who has correct knowledge 

 of even a very few kinds. They appear to think that this kind of 

 information does not belong to their profession, and to judge that 

 it would be condescending from their proper dignity to entertain 

 doubts about the accuracy and trustworthiness of those who buy 

 and sell such things. And so it comes to pass that the druggists 

 — God knows that they themselves are for the most part an illiterate 

 set — ^leave all this to the foolish and superstitious old women who 

 gather herbs and roots. Error is therefore heaped on error, and 

 will be so long as the identification of vegetable medicines is left 

 to rustic and vulgar ignorance. " 



The superb South American genus fuchsia was dedicated to this, 

 the second father of plant iconography, by Plumier in the year 1703. 



Vegetative Organography. Fuchsius has a very instructive and 

 useful introductory chapter which he styles " An Explanation of 

 Difficult Terms. ' ' From the historian's point of view this will be re- 

 garded as most valuable. It is the earliest vocabulary of botanic 

 terms that I have met with thus far; and no historian that I know 

 of has made mention of it. One gathers from this vocabulary good 

 information of progress gained— and also of retrogressions made — 

 in descriptive and organologic botany in the seventeen centuries 

 and more between Theophrastus and Fuchsius. True to his title, 

 our author omits all easy and familiar terms; does not define anew 



