338 Notice of Scientific Travellers in Brazil^ 
served, and the Prince delivered the whole to Piso, with an or- 
der to prepare them for publication. But Piso, occupied with 
other concerns, consigned these valuable documents to Dr J. de 
Laet, who had also accompanied the Prince to Brazil. Laet 
found great difficulty in decyphering the manuscript, so that 
frequently inaccurate explanations of passages were given. To 
increase the evil, the wooden cuts made from the drawings were^ 
from the carelessness of the editor and the stupidity of the prin- 
ter, inserted in wrong places ; so that the descriptions and fi- 
gures were often at variance. In this imperfect state the work 
appeared in the year 1648, in one volume folio, under the title 
Historia Naturalis Brazilice. The first part contains four me- 
dical dissertations by Piso ; the second part contains Margrave’s 
natural history of Brazil, which is in eight books : the three first 
treat of plants, four of animals, and the eighth of the country 
and its inhabitants. In the year 1650, Earl Moritz entered in- 
to the service of the great Elector of Brandenburg, by whoni he 
was raised to the rank of Prince in the year 1654. The friend^ 
ship of these illustrious men continued without interruption un- 
till the death of Moritz in 1679. Some time before his death, 
he presented to the Elector all the drawings he had made and 
caused to be executed of the objects of natural history found in 
Brazil. The drawings were partly in oil, partly in water co- 
lours. Those in oil were the most numerous and valuable. 
The oil paintings were arranged in four folio volumes, and nam- 
ed according to Margrave. The first volume consisted of draw- 
ings of fishes, crabs, molluscae, vermes, &c. ; the second of birds ; 
the third of mammiferous animals and insects ; and the fourth of 
plants and fruits. These valuable volumes were lost to the sci- 
entific world for about a century and a half, and were only lately 
discovered in the Boyal Library of Berhn by Lichtenstein, the 
professor of zoology. Had they been earlier found, Linnaeus, Buf- 
fon, Brisson, and others, would have been spared a world of learn- 
ed doubt and conjecture. The smaller drawings in water colours 
have also been discovered, and they contain many figures not in 
the larger collection of oil. paintings. That nothing might be 
wanting for the elucidation of the work of Margrave, eveii 
Prince Moritz’s copy of Margrave’s work, with the Prince’s 
own remarks, has been lately discovered in Gennany, By 
