HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



245 



and laborious writer had always the Mexican phyficians 

 for his guides in the ftudy of natural hiftory, which he 

 profecuted in that empire. They communicated to him 

 the knowledge of twelve hundred plants, with their pro- 

 per Mexican names ; more than two hundred fpecies of 

 birds ; and a large number of quadrupeds, reptiles, fillies, 

 infects, and minerals. From this mod valuable, though 

 imperfect hiftory, a fyftem of practical medicine may be 

 formed for that kingdom ; as has in part been done by 

 Dr. Farfan, in his Book of Cures, by Gregorio Lopez, 

 and other eminent phyficians. And if fmce that time the 

 ftudy of natural hiftory had not been neglected, nor fuch 

 a prepoffeiTion prevailed in favour of every thing which 

 came from beyond the feas, the inhabitants of New Spain 

 would have faved a great part of the expenfes they have 

 been at in purchafing the drugs of Europe and of Alia, 

 and reaped greater advantages from the productions of 

 their own country. Europe has been obliged to the 

 phyficians of Mexico for tobacco, American balfam, gum 

 copal, liquid amber, farfaparilla, tecamaca, jalap, barley, 

 and the purgative pine-feeds, and other fimples, which 

 have been much ufed in medicine : but the number of 

 thofe of which fhe has been deprived the benefit by the 

 ignorance and negligence of the Spaniards, is infinite. 



Among 



which it coft of fixty thoufand ducats, confifted of twenty-four books of hiftory, 

 and eleven volumes of excellent figures of plants and animals ; but the king 

 thinking it too voluminous, gave orders to his phyfician Nardo Antonio Ricchi, 

 a Neapolitan, to abridge it. This abridgement was published in Spanifh by 

 Francifco Ximenes, a Dominican, in 1615, and afterwards in Latin, at Rome, in 

 l65i,by the Lincean academicians, with notes and learned differtations, though 

 rather long and uninterefting. The manufcripts of Hernandez were preferved 

 in the library of the Efcurial, from which Nuremberg extracted, according to his 

 own confeflion, a great part of what he has written in his Natural Hiftory. F. 

 Claude Clement, a French Jefuit, difcourfing of the manufcript of Hernandez, 

 fays thus: " Qui omneslibri, & commentarii, fi prout affecti funt,ita forent per- 

 " fecti, &abfoluti, Philippus II. & Francifcus Hernandius haud quaquam Alex- 

 11 andro, & Ariftoteli hac in parte concederent." 



