have from him a history of fishes in Latin, printed in 1553, and translated by the author into French, with alterations and additions; and one of birds, published in French in 1555, written with great learning, though not without fabulous accounts, as was usual in the earlier period of natural history. Belon was perhaps the first, at least in modern times, who had glimpses of a great typical conformity in nature. In one of his works he places the skeletons of a man and a bird in apposition, in order to display their essential analogy. He introduced also many exotic plants into France. Every one knows, says a writer of the last century, that our gardens owe all their beauty to Belon.* The same writer has satisfactorily cleared this eminent naturalist from the charge of plagiarism, to which credit had been hastily given.† Belon may, on the whole, be placed by the side of Gesner.

Salviani and

Ichthyology.

28. Salviani published in 1558 a history of fishes (Animalium Aquatilium Historia), with figures well exeRondelet's cuted, but by no means numerous. He borrows most of his materials from the ancients, and having frequently failed in identifying the species they describe, cannot be read without precaution. ‡ But Rondelet (De Piscibus Marinis, 1554) was far superior as an ichthyologist, in the judgment of Cuvier, to any of his contemporaries, both by the number of fishes he has known, and the accuracy of his figures, which exceed three hundred for fresh-water and marine species. His knowledge of those which inhabit the Mediterranean Sea was so extensive that little has been added since his time. "It is the work," says the same great authority, "which has supplied almost every thing which we find on that subject in Gesner, Aldrovandus, Willoughby, Artedi, and Linnæus; and even Lacepede has been obliged, in many instances, to depend on Rondelet." The text, however, is far inferior to the figures, and is too much occupied

* Liron, Singularités Historiques, i.

456.

Id. p. 438. It had been suspected that the manuscripts of Gilles, the author of a compilation from Elian, who had himself travelled in the East, fell into the hands

of Belon, who published them as his own. Gesner has been thought to insinuate this; but Liron is of opinion that Belon was not meant by him.

Biogr. Univ. (Cuvier).

with an attempt to fix the ancient names of the several species.*

29. The very little book of Dr. Caius on British Dogs, published in 1570, the whole of which, I believe, has Aldrovandus. been translated by Pennant in his British Zoology,

is hardly worth mentioning; nor do I know that zoological literature has any thing more to produce till almost the close of the century, when the first and second volumes of Aldrovandus's vast natural history was published. These, as well as the third, which appeared in 1603, treat of birds; the fourth is on insects; and these alone were given to the world by the laborious author, a professor of natural history at Bologna. After his death in 1605, nine more folio volumes, embracing with various degrees of detail most other parts of natural history, were successively published by different editors. "We can only consider the works of Aldrovandus," says Cuvier, "as an immense compilation without taste or genius; the very plan and materials being in a great measure borrowed from Gesner; and Buffon has had reason to say that it would be reduced to a tenth part of its bulk by striking out the useless and impertinent matter." Buffon, however, which Cuvier might have gone on to say, praises the method of Aldrovandus and his fidelity of description, and even ranks his work above every other natural history. I am not acquainted with its contents; but according to Linnæus, Aldrovandus, or the editors of his posthumous volumes, added only a very few species of quadrupeds to those mentioned by Gesner, among which are the Zebra, the Jerboa, the Musk Rat of Russia, and the Manis or Scaly Ant-eater. §

30. A more steady progress was made in the science of botany, which commemorates, in those living memorials with

Biogr. Univ.

+ Id.

Hist. Naturelle, Premier Discours. The truth is, that all Buffon's censures on Aldrovandus fall equally on Gesner, who is not less accumulative of materials not properly bearing on natural history, and not much less destitute of systematic order. The remarks of Buffon on this waste of learning are very just, and applicable to the works of the sixteenth century on almost every subject as well as zoology.

§ Collections of natural history seem to have been formed by all who applied themselves to the subject in the sixteenth century; such as Cordus, Mathiolus, Mercati, Gesner, Agricola, Belon, Rondelet, Ortelius, and many others. Hakluyt mentions the cabinets of some English collectors from which he had derived assistance. Beckmann's Hist. of Inventions, ii. 57.

Botany;

Turner.

which she delights to honour her cultivators, several names still respected, and several books that have not lost their utility. Our countryman, Dr. Turner, published the first part of a New Herbal in 1551; the second and third did not appear till 1562 and 1568. "The arrangement," says Pulteney, "is alphabetical according to the Latin names, and after the description he frequently specifies the places and growth. He is ample in his discrimination of the species, as his great object was to ascertain the Materia Medica of the ancients, and of Dioscorides in particular, throughout the vegetable kingdom. He first gives names to many English plants; and allowing for the time when specifical distinctions were not established, when almost all the small plants were disregarded, and the Cryptogamia almost wholly overlooked, the number he was acquainted with is much beyond what could easily have been imagined in an original writer on his subject.

Maranta;

31. The work of Maranta, published in 1559, on the method of understanding medicinal plants, is, in the Botanical judgment of a late writer of considerable reputation, Gardens. nearly at the head of any in that age. The author is independent, though learned, extremely acute in discriminating plants known to the ancients, and has discovered many himself, ridiculing those who dared to add nothing to Dioscorides. Maranta had studied in the private garden, formed by Pinelli at Naples. But public gardens were common in Italy. Those of Pisa and Padua were the earliest, and perhaps the most celebrated. One established by the duke of Ferrara, was peculiarly rich in exotic plants procured from Greece and Asia. And perhaps the generous emulation in all things honourable between the houses of Este and Medici led Ferdinand of Tuscany, some time afterwards near the end of the century, to enrich the gardens of Pisa with the finest plants of Asia and America. The climate of France was less favourable; the first public garden seems to have been formed at Montpellier, and there was none at Paris in 1558.§ Meantime the vegetable productions of newly discovered

Pulteney's Historical Sketch of + Sprengel, Historia Rei Herbaria the Progress of Botany in England, (1807), i. $45. p. 68. + Id. 360.

§ Id. 363.

countries became familiar to Europe. Many are described in the excellent History of the Indies by Hernando d'Oviedo, such as the Cocos, the Cactus, the Guiacum. Another Spanish author, Çarate, first describes the Solanum Tuberosum, or potato, under the name of Papas.* It has been said

that tobacco is first mentioned, or at least first well described by Benzoni, in Nova Novi Orbis Historia (Geneva, 1578).† Belon went to the Levant soon after the middle of the century, on purpose to collect plants; several other writers of voyages followed before its close. Among these was Prosper Alpinus, who passed several years in Egypt, but his principal work, De Plantis Exoticis, is posthumous, and did not appear till 1627. He is said to be the first European author who has mentioned coffee.t

Gesner.

32. The critical examination of the ancients, the establishment of gardens, the travels of botanists thus furnished a great supply of plants; it was now required to compare and arrange them. Gesner first undertook this; he had formed a garden of his own at Zurich, and has the credit of having discovered the true system of classifying plants according to the organs of fructification; which however he does not seem to have made known, nor were his botanical writings published till the last century. Gesner was the first who mentions the Indian Sugar-cane and the Tobacco, as well as many indigenous plants. It is said that he was used to chew and smoke tobacco, "by which he rendered himself giddy, and in a manner drunk." § As Gesner died in 1564, this carries back the knowledge of tobacco in Europe several years beyond the above-mentioned treatise of Benzoni.

33. Dodoens, or Dodonæus, a Dutch physician, in 1553, translated into his own language the history of Dodoens. plants by Fuchs, to which he added 133 figures.

Sprengel, Historia Rei Herbariæ du café, et en ait décrit la preparation (1807), i. 378.

avec exactitude. It is possible that this book of Rauwolf being written in German, and the author being obscure in comparison with Prosper Alpinus, his prior claim has been till lately overlooked.

§ Sprengel, 373. 390.

These, instead of using the alphabetical order of his predecessor, he arranged according to a method which he thought more natural. "He explains," says Sprengel, "well and learnedly the ancient botanists, and described many plants for the first time;" among these are the Ulex Europæus, and the Hyacinthus non scriptus. The great aim of rendering the modern Materia Medica conformable to the ancient seems to have made the early botanists a little inattentive to objects before their eyes. Dodoens himself is rather a physician than a botanist, and is more diligent about the uses of plants than their characteristics. He collected all his writings, under the title Stirpium Historia Pemptades Sex, at Antwerp in 1583, with 1341 figures, a greater number than had yet been published.

34. The Stirpium Adversaria, by Pena and Lobel, the latter of whom is best known as a botanist, was Lobel. published at London in 1570. Lobel indeed, though a native of Lille, having passed most of his life in England, may be fairly counted among our botanists. He had previously travelled much over Europe. "In the execution of this work," says Pulteney, "there is exhibited, I believe, the first sketch, rude as it is, of a natural method of arrangement, which however extends no farther than throwing the plants into large tribes, families, or orders, according to the external appearance or habit of the whole plant or flower, without establishing any definitions or characters. The whole forms forty-four tribes. Some contain the plants of one or two modern genera, others many, and some, it must be owned, very incongruous to each other. On the whole, they are much superior to Dodoens's divisions."* Lobel's Adversaria contains descriptions of 1200 or 1500 plants, with 272 engravings; the former are not clear or well expressed,, and in this he is inferior to his contemporaries; the latter are on copper, very small, but neat. În a later work, the Plantarum Historia, Antwerp, 1576, the number of figures is very considerably greater, but the book has been less esteemed, being a sort of complement to the other. Sprengel speaks more highly of Lobel than the Biographie Universelle.

Historical Sketch, p. 102.

+ Sprengel, 399.