LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 267 



their attention to an important part of that classic diagnosis to 

 which they all the while have been blind; that which says that 

 acacia produces its seeds in a pod, after the manner of the lupine; 

 and Cordus asks his party how this gum-bearing thorny tree that 

 yields plums instead of legumes can possibly be believed to be the 

 acacia? It would be easy to mutiply by twenty the examples of 

 this kind which find mention and full demonstration in the 

 Botanologicon ; but the above must suffice. They are repre- 

 sentative. 



Almost every one who has written a few chapters of botanical 

 history has made record of the fact that at first the botanists of 

 middle Europe wrongly expected to find, and as wrongly believed 

 themselves to have found there most of the plants that had been 

 described by ancient Greek and Arabian authors. The discovery 

 of the error and the correction of it have usually been credited to 

 botanists of later centuries. But Euricius Cordus is the man who 

 at the very outset, and himself a German, saw the magnitude of 

 this mistake, and so clearly exposed it, that despite the rage 

 of an incensed multitude of doctors and apothecaries, the reform 

 began at once. If Fuchsius in his great folio of pictures had in 

 many an instance corrected Brunfelsian errors as to the identity of 

 plants, it was largely if not altogether due to his having studied 

 and been guided by the Botanologicon. He pays full tribute to 

 the importance of this work in his Preface, which was not written 

 until after the demise of Euricius Cordus. In this Fuchsius says: 

 "In this work of restoring botany Brunfelsius was succeeded by 

 Euricius Cordus, a man of high integrity, great industry, distin- 

 guished as a poet, and a man of varied learning. What he accom- 

 plished for the elevation and advancement of botany so abundantly 

 appears in his Botanologicon as to need no further commendation 

 from us. But this I wish to say; that one so singularly qualified 

 seemed worthy of a longer life, in which to have contributed to 

 medical botany much more matter of the same high import. " 



At the time when the Botanologicon appeared, the illustrated 

 folios of Brunfelsius were quite new, and the work is often referred 

 to. On one of the earlier pages of this botanical colloquy there is 

 such a record of contemporary opinion about the merits of Brun- 

 felsius' book as can not fail to be interesting, and for the sake of 

 which I shall attempt a reproduction of the whole passage. 



Megobacchus. Since Gallus desires it, may we not all go out 

 and botanize a while? 



Ralla. Please grant us this favor. 



