59 
HISTORY OF BOTANY. 
and original pattern in this branch, was published by Caspar Sc h we 
feld, born at Greifenberg in Silesia , who died as physician at Gorhti, 
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 , , France , England, , Germany, Hun- 
gary, See. had several times his arms and feet fradured, owing to the 
zeal and curiosity which guided his peregrinations, and died finally at 
an advanced age in 1609, as professor of botany at Leyden t. 
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 coMed, dts- 
covered, and published by the ancients. Notwithstanding all these ad- 
vantages, botany remained an uncultivated republic. Threatened w 
troubles in proportion to the increase of its population, it wanted w at 
the ancients had never introduced-a constitution, a ^ a, “” ° 
to preserve order, and the necessary divisions and chst,na,on 
the numerous species, races, and families, in order to fix the preser- 
. Historia SM— «» tSoo._Th.no, ropheam Sll.si, i. 
quo ammalium vis et usus perstringuntur, Ligma,, 1 04 , o. 
, __ the flowing works : Historia rariorum plantarum per Hispanias observatarum, 
+ Hewr o ethe Pannoniam, Austrian!, &c. Anm. i 5 8 3 .-Histona plan- 
Antnjo. i57 6 > in 0Ll * 
tarum Rariorum, a vol. Mo, Anm. i6or, &c. 
1 2 
