120 
THE PLANT WORLD. 
Of these I wish to advert to at least one more, and one which 
shows that this botanist, when afield, both observed and minutely 
described the smallest and most insignificant of flowering plants, 
such as other able and learned botanists before him either had not 
seen, or else had not thought it worth while to name and describe. 
Thalius was the first to study and describe as forming a new 
genus that group of plants now known as the genus Eleocharis, 
commonly believed to have been first segregated from the old 
Scirpus aggregate by Robert Brown in 1810, which Thalius’ 
Lychnanthemum therefore antedates by two hundred and twenty- 
three years. 
It is very interesting to observe the skill with which this botan¬ 
ical scholar and expert accomplishes his task of trying to convey 
to the minds of his readers an idea of what an Eleocharis looks 
like. It must be borne in mind that a man drawing up descrip¬ 
tions of new genera and new species as long ago as the years, 
we will say 1570 to 1585, had few models before him for imita¬ 
tion. That adjunct of phytography, a fixed descriptive termi¬ 
nology evolved much later, was not available to writers of the 
sixteenth century. But one thing a respectable botanist of any 
era must do: he must describe plants in such a way that any com¬ 
petent botanist reading the description may thereby form a mental 
picture of the type described. And this thing Thalius had to 
accomplish on the strength of his own resources, as a man of cul¬ 
tivated intellect and of botanical experience. His descriptions 
are, therefore, wholly original; framed upon his own model. 
Here is his account of the genus, simply turned into English. 
“ Lycnanthemum consists of erect rush stems each bearing at its 
very apex a spicate flower, the outline of the whole recalling a 
candle and its flame. Of this genus I have observed at least three 
species. A large one has large stalks or rushes, and rather thick, 
of about the thickness and figure of a wheat-straw, the spicate 
apex, which takes the place of a flower, being yellowish brown, 
two inches long, and appearing to be made up of compacted 
chaffy scales. A middle sized species consists of reeds much 
more slender and not sustaining themselves in that erectness, their 
height little more than the width of one’s palm, ending in a short 
