HISTORY OF BOTANY. 59 



and original pattern in this branch, was published by Caspar Schwen k.- 

 FELD, born at Greifenberg in Silesia, who died as physician at Gorlitz, 

 in 1609. He gave a full description of the animals, plants, and minerals 

 of Silesia*. 



Among the itinerant naturalists of the sixteenth and all preceding 

 centuries, none distinguished himself more by an indefatigable zeal, and 

 a variety of observations and discoveries, than a Belgian. His name 

 was Charles Ecluse, born at Arras, in 1526. He was to have 

 studied law, but bestowed all his diligence and the resource of his for- 

 tune upon botany, travelled almost through the whole East and West 

 of Europe, including Portugal, Spain, Fra?hce, England, Germany, Hun- 

 gary, Sec. had several times his arms and feet fraftured, owing to the 

 zeal and curiosity which guided his peregrinations, and died finally at 

 an advanced age in 1609, as professor of botany at Leydenf. 



During a period of about one hundred and fifty years, a consider- 

 able provision of materials for natural history had been made. These 

 materials were more considerable than any ever before collefted, dis- 

 covered, and published by the ancients. Notwithstanding all these ad- 

 vantages, botany remained an uncultivated republic. Threatened with 

 troubles in proportion to the increase of its population, it wanted what 

 the ancients had never introduced — a constitution, a coUeftion of laws 

 to preserve order, and the necessary divisions and distin6lions between 

 the numerous species, races, and families, in order to fix the preser- 



• Historia Stirpium Silesiae— et ejus Fossiliam, I/^s;, 1600.— Theriotroplieum Silesiat ia 

 quo animalium vis et usus perstringuntur, Lignicii, 1604, quarto. 



f He wrote the following works : Historia rariorum plantarum per Hispaaias observatarum, 

 Antuj. 1576, in oftavo. — Per Pannoniam, Austrian!, &c. Ant-vj. 1583.—- Historia plan- 

 tarum Rariorum, a vol. folio, Antnu. 1601, &c. 



I 2 vation 



