Volume 8 
Number 2 
The Plant World 
31 Jlasrajtne of JJopular •Botany 
FEBRUARY, 1905 
A GLIMPSE AT EARLY BOTANICAL LITERATURE.* 
By Lucien M. Underwood, 
Torrey Professor of Botany in Columbia University. 
The average botanical student who has not seriously studied 
the history of his subject often becomes imbued with the idea that 
his science dates back only to Linnaeus whom some of our earlier 
text-books even have called the “ father of botany.” Those who 
do not hold this erroneous impression are likely to hold one equally 
incorrect, namely that Linnaeus was the originator of the binomial 
system of nomenclature. The task of describing plants was very 
early undertaken and the publication of herbals, as the early floras 
were called, gave us the body of the very early botanical literature. 
Some of the earliest published were those of Brunfels (1530- 
1532), Fuchs (1542), Lobel (1581), Hieronymus Bock (1587), 
Gerard (1597), and Dodoens. (1644). These herbals written in 
Latin as the current language of learning, but often in the quaint 
old German, Dutch or English of their day, described the plants 
known to their authors giving special attention to their supposed 
medicinal qualities; and there was scarcely a plant in those days 
without some reputed remedial properties. Many of these herbals 
were extensively illustrated, and considering the time in which 
they appeared these were often very creditable illustrations and 
are mostly recognizable by those familiar with the common Euro- 
* This is the first of a series of articles, to be published from time to 
lime, on botanical matters of historic interest. 
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