THE INTRODUCTION OF THE TULIP, AND THE TULIPOMANIA. 19 



and described them in 1561.* He says : " In this year of our Lord 1559, 

 at the beginning of April, in the garden of the ingenious and learned 

 Councillor John Henry Herwart, I saw there a plant which had sprung 

 from seed which had been procured from Byzantia, or as some say from 

 Cappadocia. It was growing with one large reddish flower, like a red lily, 

 having eight petals of which four are outside, and just as many within, 

 with a pleasant smell, soothing and delicate, which soon leaves it." 

 Levier points out that, according to the description, the smell, and its 

 early blooming, it is known as a spring Tulip, which to-day is described 

 as Tulipa suaveolens, and not as Tulipa Gesneriana, and it may be 

 assumed that these Tulips grown at Ausburg were grown from seed 

 brought home, or sent home, by Busbequius. 



Clusius in his works does not refer to the Ausburg Tulips, for in 

 comparing the different dates the earliest is 1593, when Clusius came to 

 Vienna, and there met Busbequius, from whom he obtained Tulip seeds, 

 as he mentioned in his " History of Bare Plants," f and as he makes no 

 earlier reference we may take it that these seeds yielded the first Tulips 

 that Clusius owned. Later, Clusius tells us he made experiments as to 

 the comestibility of the bulbs, and in the year 1592 he instructed the 

 apothecary, J. Muler, of Frankfort, to preserve some in sugar, as was 

 done with the bulbs of the Orchids, and he found them far superior in 

 taste and sweetness to the latter. In 1593 Clusius was appointed 

 Professor of Botany at Leiden, but the Tulip found its way into Holland 

 before Clusius and probably quite independently of him. In the " His- 

 torisch Verhaal," of April 1625, Vol. ix. 9th vers', Nicolas Wassenaer 

 writes : " The first Tulip seen in Amsterdam was in the garden of the 

 apothecary Walich Zieuwertz, to the great astonishment of all the florists ; 

 but they increased considerably after the celebrated botanist Dr. Clusius 

 came to Leiden, who, besides Tulips, brought with him many other rare 

 plants, such as the Hyacinth of Peru, which was sold for 40 florins, 

 also the first Crown Imperial ; and that Dr. Clusius now charged such an 

 extortionate price for his Tulips, so much indeed that no one could 

 procure them not even for money. Plans were made by which the best 

 and most of his plants were stolen by night, whereupon he lost courage 

 and the desire to continue their cultivation ; but those who had stolen the 

 Tulips wasted no time in increasing them by sowing the seeds, and by 

 this means the seventeen provinces were well stocked." 



As early as 1590 Joh. Hogeland grew the Tulip in Leiden,i and he 

 possibly procured them from one George Bye, a merchant of Mechlin, 

 who made a study of plants and who cultivated Tulips that he had 

 received from an Eastern merchant at Antwerp. § 



Clusius divided his Tulips into three classes in accordance with their 

 time of flowering — Praecoces, the early flowering, Serotinae, the late, and 

 Dubiae, those flowering between the two. He does not lose sight of the 

 fact that such a division could not be of importance, inasmuch as he says 

 explicitly (I.e. p. 147) that he has grown from the same seed Tulip 

 Praecox and some single plants of the other two species. Parkinson, 

 however, was stricter in his mode of division, and says in his " Paradisus," 



* De Hortis Germaniae, dc, p. 213. f p. 142. 



% Clusius, I.e. 147. § Clusius, I.e. 150. 



c 2 



