274 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



to memorize were those of ancient Greek and Roman physicians, 

 philosophers, poets, and historians. 



In the year 1540, when Cordus was twenty-five years of age, he 

 had in manuscript among other things four books which he had 

 entitled Historia Plantarum. The four books contain an aggregate 

 of 446 chapters, each devoted to one species; so that in this manu- 

 script he had described that number of species. The work embraces 

 a part of the results of his travels at home in Germany. Finished, 

 as to these four books, as early as 1540, the work was not 

 published until 1561, or seventeen years after Cordus' death. We 

 shall get an idea of the wealth of these pages in botanical matter 

 entirely new if we but glance at the contents of Book I. The first 

 four types described are, in modem nomenclature, Drosera, Gratiola, 

 Sagittaria, and Bistorta. Every one of them, at the time when 

 Cordus here described them, was new to science. Bistorta had been 

 figured by Brunfels, though guessed by him to be one of the dracon- 

 tiums of Dioscorides, and not described. 



In the year 1542 Cordus went to Italy, dividing his time for nearly 

 two years between the universities of Padua, Ferrara, and Bologna, 

 where he made the acquaintance of Luca Ghini, reputed the most 

 accomplished botanist of his time, but of whose greatness only the 

 tradition remains, because he published nothing; thence he pro- 

 ceeded to Florence, Pisa, Lucca, and late in the summer of 1544, to 

 Rome. The misdirected and ungovemed zeal with which he prose- 

 cuted this summer journey in a southern climate cost the young 

 man his life. In the company of two friends and a servant, while 

 tending Romeward, he ranged everywhere from the cool mountains 

 down to the heated and malarious marshes of the seaboard. Al- 

 most immediately on reaching Rome, Cordus fell ill of a fever and 

 died there in September, 1544, at the age of 29 years. His body 

 found its resting place there in the Church^of ^TSTana de Anima, 

 where there is a long Latin epitaph, ending with the lines': 



Ingenio superest Cordus; mens ipsa recepta est 

 Casio; quod terrce est, maxima Roma tenet. 



The botanical outcome of these Italian joumeyings was a Book 

 V of the Historia Plantarum, consisting of descriptions of 25 plants 

 which he had studied in that country, as not having been met with 

 by him in Germany. This work was first published at Strasburg 

 in 1563; then again reprinted at late as 1751, in the large folio 

 entitled Opera Botanica Conradi Gesneri. 



« Gesneri Opera Botanica, vol. i, p. 20 (1731). 



