BOTANY. 



45 



greater part of the territory we inhabit, has been as unknown 

 to us as are Persia and China. 



Europe, mistress of the nations by which the rest of the 

 globe is peopled, has not negle6ted these countries, but has 

 sent her naturalists to examine them. The travellers, how- 

 ever, who perambulated the Peruvian territory with this inten- 

 tion, prior to the year 1770, made but small advancements in 

 knowledge. The more ancient of them, for want of a due 

 method in arranging their colle6lions, were obliged to bring 

 them within a very narrow compass, to avoid confusion*. 

 Those who succeeded them, although possessed of all the re- 

 quisite notions to class and arrange a great number of speci- 

 mens, did not profit adequately by their talents, either because 

 they limited their inquiries exclusively to the coast f-, or if 



* Among these travellers, the first, in point of time, is the before-mentioned 

 Pedro De Osma, by profession a soldier, who visited Peru a very short time after 

 the conquest. He described several plants in such a way as to prove that he was 

 not deficient in talents. The second is Father Joseph De Acosta, whose natural 

 history has procured him the title of the Spanish Pliny. He came to Peru about the 

 year 1572, that is, forty years after the death of Atahuallpa, the event by which 

 the epoch of the conquest is established. The third is Dodlor Mathias De Porres, 

 physician to the household of the then viceroy of Peru, somewhere about the year 

 1 6 15. He wrote a work on the virtues of all the fruits and seeds of this kingdom, 

 which was printed at Lima in 1621. He was likewise the author of another work, 

 entided Concordancies Medicinales (Medicinal Concordances), in which he touched 

 on many of the plants of Peru that possess particular virtues. The fourth and fifth 

 are the Licentiates Calderon and Robles, who wrote, in conjundion, a treatise on 

 the plants of Peru. 



t In the years 1709-10 and 11, Father Louis Feuille made several excursions 

 along the coasts of Peru, and delineated and described, according to the ' system of 

 Tournefort, many of the plants which are there found, as may be seen in his 

 diaries. 



they 



