HISTORY OF THE SCIENCE, 424 
this physician sent him many rare plants. Some as- 
sure us that he has in his works* given many ideal 
fioures of plants, and that he has described several 
as. growing wild in Britam, which after him nobody 
ever could find. 
The first is probably more owing to the very bad 
manner in which his figures are drawn, which in- 
deed never were faithfully copied. His Nymphaea 
lutea minor septentrionalium is an ill represented 
figure, of the Nymphaea minima lately discovered 
in Germany. The second is to be attributed to— 
carelessness, as he trusted too much to his memory, 
and hence often imagined he had seen a plant in 
Britam, which he in fact had met with in other 
countries. : 
Charles Clusius or Charles de l’Ecluse, was born 
at Artois or Atrecht, in the Netherlands, 1526. His 
parents wished him to become a lawyer, and he went 
with this design to Loewen. But he soon changed 
his mind, and, from his great love to botany, soon 
undertook the most tedious and troublesome journeys 
through Spain, Portugal, France, Great Britain, the 
Netherlands, Germany, and Hungary. In his 24th 
year he already became dropsical, of which however 
* Matth. de Lobelii, (de Obel) Plantarum seu stirpium 
historia et adversaria. Antwerp. 1576. fol. Begins to be scarce. 
The number of the figures is 1495. Icones plantarum. Ant- 
werp. 1581. Pars. I. et II. Square 4to. ‘The publisher of 
the first work, Christopher Plantin, has published this without 
prefixing Lobel’s name. It has 1096 plates, with 2173 figures, 
mostly from Clusius and Dodonaeus. 
Dd3 he 
