JOAN BAPTISTA POETA 



THEO. HOLM 

 Brookland, D. C. 



Like a cemetery with costly monuments for the rich, 

 modest wooden crosses for the poor, and for others sites 

 unmarked, hidden beneath brambles and weeds, a pic- 

 ture of death and oblivion— so history of botany has 

 dealt with records of the past, with life and labors 

 crowned with success or hopelessly ignored and forgot- 

 ten. 



For years, nay centuries unchallenged some works 

 have braved the everchanging hands of time, guiding 

 human thought into a highway with increasing light, con- 

 fronting nature, its laws and problems ; great steps have 

 been taken forwards, new facts have been born, militat- 

 ing against former, old conceptions and resulting in com- 

 plete revolution. Coupled with intense sincerity great 

 skill has conquered, paving the way for future research, 

 culminating in success, or suddenly, without a warning, 

 crushed with defeat. Many a brilliant thought, but dis- 

 guised by a less powerful style, has remained obscure 

 and unnoticed, until at some proper time, as if surviving 

 itself, it has arisen and gained due homage, even though 

 late and in foreign soil. 



Inclement fate has doomed to silence names of great 

 men, more fortunate thus than labors of merit that have 

 been misunderstood, carelessly weighed, and exposed in 

 unfavorable light. Who knows Porta! His work was 

 soon forgotten and in history it stands among those ridi- 

 culed or silently passed by. He was born in classic Italy, 

 in the middle of the sixteenth century, an era of scientific 

 research, marked by rapidly increasing interest in bot- 

 any, with splendid results laid down in precious volumes, 

 copiously and carefully illustrated. They were the days 

 of Caisalpino, Dodonaeus, Conrad Gesner, Fuchs, Clusius, 



