¥ fo net OF TORONTO UNIVERSITY I 00837264 1 1761 3 ’ r% 1’ ' (tare ‘ 1 wy } ee ie : y Ww vey ’ 11 ‘ : A ’ 1 ‘ ‘ ; tw J ' ' \ ’ K \ ‘ pet y vir ' yt ' ‘ peers ie) $i) } ' eae ‘ yo ‘ yarn (ie 5% A en ae ‘ i i bie ye ey ; ; \ 2 rer ‘ } \ ‘ wt vet woh bd \ ‘ 5 ' ; ’ ‘ ca hie » aid fal! y ‘ Y + y ' ’ ' iy , yok : yh : } Ey e : ‘ 6s ’ U ' i € BK My ‘ ' ‘ ; , ATT oe Y toa 4 ; ; : } ‘ fobs ss"t 4 , f 5 wn Te paebert uN H i ° . ; we 1 » ‘a ‘ V7 Fay r Vos § Gy te ‘ . ‘ ' ‘ ‘ . ‘ . 1% oe > ' ‘ ; : 4 ' ‘ i ' / i ‘ + ‘ r a ] ‘ . ; erree ; ; M , ‘ dra keene r : ‘ sie state BF +e. ¥ 4 *: ; TT) ’ a8 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/earlynaturalistsOOmialuoft i io Seep ee a lee te. THE EARLY NATURALISTS THEIR LIVES AND WORK (1530-1789) BY L. C. MIALL, D.Sc., F.R.S. Ud ene MACMILLAN AND CO,, LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1912 PREFACE Tue old naturalists have occupied so much of my leisure of late years that it becomes a pleasant task to write about them. My chief aim is to induce such readers as I may find to make themselves better acquainted with the founders of modern natural history. To succeed in this attempt a rather strict selection of authors is indis- pensable, and I have been forced to omit many of those workers at details to whom natural history owes so much, in order to give fair space to the pioneers who opened out new fields of inquiry or introduced new methods. I cannot pretend, however, to have been altogether con- sistent and impartial in my selection. Some old works have been included, not so much because they are important as because they give a lively picture of the state of knowledge in a past age. Insects take up more than their due share of space, partly because they are really prominent in the works of early naturalists, partly because old books about insects give me more than com- mon pleasure. Such preferences are natural, and if not pushed too far, may be advantageous to the reader as well as to the author. No more fatal mistake can be committed by an author who undertakes to handle a wide subject than to fancy that he can attain to com- pleteness unless indeed his work takes the form of an index ; and it is almost as unpromising to divide the vi PREFACE space impartially among the persons or things to be described; the product, however well-proportioned, is sure to be lifeless. Some readers will be surprised that I give so wide an extension to the word early as to include Buffon and the Jussieus. But the time has already come when hardly any eighteenth-century naturalists, with the exception of a few eminent students of life-histories (Swammerdam, Réaumur, &c.), are searched for biological facts; they are important merely as historical land- marks. Indeed zoology and botany have been so largely recast since 1859 that we shall shortly make Darwin’s Origin of Species the era of modern biology, and consider all naturalists early who precede Darwin. It would have been a delightful task, had it been possible, to continue the history through the age of evolutionary speculation ; to show how Linneus’ rude sketch of the kingdoms of nature has been enlarged ; how new studies, of which Linnezeus had little conception (comparative anatomy, embryology, geographical distri- bution and paleontology), have become strong and fertile ; how a fairly satisfactory grouping of the genera of flowering plants into families has been devised, how the cryptogams, long despised as casual and unstable, — have been proved to rival the flowering plants in prac- tical importance and intellectual interest ; and how the history of extinct animals and plants has been illumi- nated by a theory of continuous descent. I need make no apology for having declined so vast and so difficult an addition. Some biographers seem to hold that nothing in the career of a man of science signifies very much except his effective contributions to knowledge. His mistakes and failures, however many and grievous, are, they PREFACE vii think, no longer a matter of practical concern to any- body. When we examine a building we consider the plan and its execution, but do not care to be told how many bricks were dropped as the work went on. This is the amiable view of official eulogists, and also of some writers who, without being bound to praise, consider nothing but economy of the reader’s time. It may appear to others that something besides positive achieve- ment should be recorded. We want to know not merely what was discovered, but how it was discovered. The discoveries, even of great men, have often been vitiated by serious mistakes, which have subsequently been cor- rected by men of far inferior power. Whether in such cases we give the whole credit to the man who first indicated the process, or to the man who first arrived at a true result, we do some injustice and at the same time misinform our readers, who may fairly claim that in important cases all the essential steps in the discovery should be laid before them. We want to know how some real discoverers began by trying false routes, how others were impeded by time-honoured delusions, or by overbold speculation. These things are part of the story, and cannot be omitted without loss. The classics of natural history are not very much studied in our own time. Few of them command high prices, except those which treat of birds, or are richly illustrated, or exemplify the history of printing and engraving, and only public libraries take much pains to enlarge their collections. Hence the works of such early masters as Malpighi, Swammerdam, Ray, Leeuwenhoek and Réaumur are still within the purchasing power of ordinary students. I wish that every naturalist might deem some acquaintance with them as part of his equipment. vill PREFACE The time bestowed upon the Early Naturalists by author and reader will have been well spent if it helps them to attain a comprehensive view of biological his- tory, which is indispensable to the appreciation of recent work. History is necessary to the student who practises modern methods and is inspired by modern ideas, for the same reason that embryology is necessary to com- parative anatomy ; to know what is we must know how it came to be. : I have to thank Dr. B. Daydon Jackson for corrections — and elucidations of material value. L. C. M. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION: NATURAL HISTORY DOWN TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY : : A ; 1 SECTION I. THE NEW BIOLOGY THE REVIVAL OF BOTANY . i ! : AAT > OTTO BRUNFELS . ‘ j ; ahaa _ Higronymus Bock (TRAGus) R ; Gee LEONHARD FUCHS. : i ; . 24 VALERIUS CORDUS : ; ; ‘ ; j os ae CONRAD GESNER . : : ‘ ’ ; , ne MATTHIAS DE LOBEL . ; ; ; ‘ : i ae ANDREA CESALPINI (OR CESALPINO) . ; | PIERRE BELON : , , ; ; ; ; 40 GUILLAUME RONDELET . : ‘ ; ‘ ; ete THE ENCYCLOPADIC NATURALISTS OF THE RENAISSANCE 47 SECTION II. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS (EARLY TIMES TO THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY) : . a x CONTENTS SECTION III. SOME EARLY ENGLISH NATURAL- ISTS AND A CONTEMPORARY FRENCH AGRICULTURIST WILLIAM TURNER. JOHN GERARD JOHN CAIUS . THOMAS MOUFET . CHARLES BUTLER . OLIVIER DE SERRES SECTION IV. RAY AND SOME OF HIS FELLOW- WORKERS JOHN RAY AND FRANCIS WILLUGHBY . MARTIN LISTER SECTION V. THE MINUTE ANATOMISTS RoBERT Hooke MARCELLO MALPIGHI . ‘ ‘ ‘ NEHEMIAH GREW . JAN JACOBZ SWAMMERDAM . ANTONY VAN LEEUWENHOEK SECTION VI. EARLY STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE ANATOMY FRANCESCO REDI . CLAUDE PERRAULT AND HIS COLLEAGUES IN THE FRENCH ACADEMY OF SCIENCE SoME ENGLISH CONTEMPORARIES OF REDI AND PERRAULT PAGE 76 78 79 84 87 93 99 130 135 145 166 174 200 225 229 237 CONTENTS xi SECTION VII. THE SCHOOL OF REAUMUR PAGE JOHANN LEONHARD FRISCH . ‘ , . 240 RENE-ANTOINE FERCHAULT DE REAUMUR . . 244 ABRAHAM TREMBLEY . ; . 279 CHARLES BONNET . ! . 284 PIERRE LYONET . 5 : . 291 AvuGUST JOHANN ROESEL VON ROSENHOF . . 293 THE INVESTIGATION OF THE Puss MorTH (1634-1892) . 303 SECTION VIII. LINNAAXUS AND THE JUSSIEUS CarRL LinNzus (LINNE) : : ; . 3810 Some EARLY STUDIES OF THE FLOWER : ; Pee Ya BERNARD DE JUSSIEU; ANTOINE LAURENT DE JUSSIEU 351 SECTION IX. BUFFON GrorcEs Louis LECLERC, COMTE DE BUFFON . 359 1789 AND LATER . ; . . ‘ . 390 INDEX S|. ; ; ; ; ‘ J f . 3892 fi aa + ay" \} 1 ; : ; ; i : y i ‘ i 4 | i ‘ ‘ . H ) ‘s i H { * ’ é i : f oy 5 OE fol ae Gest ' : AS a be oe igeg if oP ‘ ase ¢ ‘eal ; ‘ s . \ , « g : \ . * rat, : ret Se - t q > + Caen Se esl / fas » i “ + , ey z aad . ¥ * Ar a" 3 1 A PRCT vs% ‘ ‘ . 7 4 \ * sig. # { 1) . "\ , -" 4 \ sy ' b's i i y ¥ * ‘ et) Le : 1 ‘ .: ‘ 4 " + ok — ty at y rast i } 4 = ; ban * INTRODUCTION: NATURAL HISTORY DOWN TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY THE beginnings of natural history are wholly unknown to us. In a very remote past men made themselves acquainted with some of the properties of plants and with some of the habits of common animals, learned to distinguish a few of the more conspicuous kinds, and gave names to such as seemed to them important or curious. The most interesting to us of these early inquiries were made before the Christian era in Greece ; similar investigations were no doubt pursued in Egypt, India and other eastern countries, whose history is less accessible. ! The beautiful land of Greece, intersected and indented in many places by the sea, rising into lofty mountains, enjoying a climate propitious to labour, well furnished with small harbours, and having ready access to all Mediterranean ports; more than all the rest, inhabited by a people of singular enterprise, was upwards of two thousand years ago the cradle of the sciences. Neither Asia nor Africa has done so much for the scientific education of the world as the little country of Greece. The heavenly bodies, the seasons, the winds, the life of animals and plants were there observed with eager curiosity. Ploughmen, gardeners, vine-growers, wood- A 2 INTRODUCTION men, shepherds, herdsmen, horse-breeders, dog-fanciers, hunters, fowlers, fishermen and beemasters handed down to their sons the slight improvements which had brought them success. Physicians were highly esteemed, and gave employment to druggists and root collectors, who sought out rare plants, not disdaining to practise superstitious rites, possibly as a means of keeping out competitors. From such informants as these much knowledge concerning plants and animals was collected, and at length recorded in books, most of which are now known only by chance quotations. Herodotus describes the rivers, climates and remarkable animals of the distant countries which he had visited in the course of his travels. Xenophon, who was not only a general, an historian, and a moralist, but an inquisitive naturalist and sportsman as well, shows how much attention had been bestowed upon animals before the age of systematic treatises. He gives lively descriptions of the hares, deer, wild boars and hounds which amused his leisure, and contributes the valuable information that in his day lions and leopards still haunted Thrace, Macedonia or the wild country further to the north. Some of the Athenian philosophers discoursed upon natural phenomena, and especially upon the phenomena of life, with an acuteness and comprehensiveness which have moved the admiration of all succeeding generations. Aristotle, who dealt with the whole range of science, surprises the modern reader by his knowledge of migra- tion (not only in the easily observed crane, pelican and quail, but in the mackerel and tunny), of the artifice by which the angler-fish captures its prey, of the brood- pouch of the male pipe-fish (in this case the facts were only partly understood), of the laying of eggs by worker- 1 Theophrastus, Hist. Plant., IX, Ch. 8. INTRODUCTION 3 bees (eggs which produce only drones), of the sound- producing mechanism of the cicada and the grasshopper, of the hectocotylus-arm of some Octopod, of sharks attached to the mother by a kind of placenta, of the early stages of the developing chick, and of many more secrets of nature. It is true that much of his knowledge is drawn from other observers, as words like “it is said,” continually remind us, and that hardly any of his stories are perfectly right, but what a range of curiosity they indicate! We find too abundance of general remarks on structure, valuable because they go just as far as obser- vation extended and no farther, such generalisations as Bacon called “ axiomata media,” e.g. that horned quadru- peds, with no upper front teeth, ruminate; that birds which are armed with spurs are never armed with lacerating claws; that in poultry the eye is closed chiefly by the lower lid, but in owls by the upper lid; that insects with more than one pair of wings may bear a sting in the tail, but that such a sting is never found in two-winged insects. Aristotle is the real founder of Comparative Anatomy, and perhaps no science ever made so prosperous a start, enriched from its birth with such a multitude, not only of facts but ideas. | No pilot can explore unsurveyed channels without a confidence which sometimes leads to disaster. The Greek philosophers would have been more than men if they had not often tried to explain things which they very imperfectly understood. Aristotle at least well knew the risks which he ran. “This,” he says, “seems to be the mode of generation of bees, as ascertained both by reason and observation. All that takes place is not indeed cleared up; even if it were, we must rather rely upon observations than reasoning, and rely upon reasoning t INTRODUCTION only if it agrees with manifest facts (phenomena).”? We need not be surprised that, in spite of the warning which he had himself given, and a mental bias towards scepticism rather than towards credulity, he should have taken for granted many beliefs which cannot stand a strict inquiry. Experiment, which modern science regards as ' a chief test of conjectures and a chief means of gaining new knowledge, was not yet reckoned among the ordinary resources of the natural philosopher.? Theophrastus is not to be compared with Aristotle as a thinker. It belongs to the age in which he lived that he should have shown the same passion for multifarious knowledge and the same lack of acquaintance with the scientific uses of experiment. The two botanical treatises by Theophrastus which have come down to us are founded on a wide knowledge of the plants, not only of Greece, but of Egypt and Persia as well. Some of these plants must have been minutely investigated, for details are noted which were little attended to by the botanists of modern Europe until the time of Malpighi. The natural history of Theophrastus, like that of Aristotle, was far too extensive to be the pro- duct of a single life-time, but who his predecessors were, and what learning they transmitted to him, are questions to which no satisfactory answers can be returned. The botanic garden of Theophrastus is no better authenticated than the royal menageries and the army of collectors, which are said to have provided materials for the zoological studies of Aristotle. It is vouched 1 De Generatione, III, x, 25. 2 We can only point to two examples of deliberate scientific experiments in Greek authors, those on the reflection and refraction of light, contained in a treatise on Optics often attributed to Ptolemy, and those on the numerical relations of the musical scale, for which Diogenes Laertius gives the credit to Pythagoras. INTRODUCTION 5 for by Diogenes Laertius, an uncritical writer, who flourished some five hundred years after the death of Theophrastus, and Diogenes speaks oF a garden, not of a botanic garden.} If Greek liberty and civilisation could have endured, Greek philosophy and science would no doubt have overcome many of their early difficulties, among which we must reckon an undue propensity to argument. But a long course of crushing misfortunes arrested their progress. Alexandria now became the great centre of learning and science, and here a Greek and Semitic school of much celebrity laboured to extend the knowledge of geometry, astronomy, optics and geooraphy. Human anatomy also was diligently and profitably studied in Alexandria under Herophilus, Erasistratus. and their successors, but after Aristotle and Theophrastus no great progress was made in natural history until science of every kind died out. The most important treatises which have come down to us from the Roman empire are the Materia Medica of Dioscorides and the Natural History of Pliny. Dioscorides recorded what was known of the occur- rence, form, colour and properties of medicinal plants ; he paid great attention to the names of the plants; his classification is utilitarian, being mainly founded upon the useful products which the plants yield. Now and then, however, a succession of plants belonging to the same family (Labiates, Umbellifers, Composites, Borages, or Leguminosze) shows that real affinities had been perceived and made use of. Close resemblance in leaf and stem did not conceal from him the funda- mental unlikeness of the stinging nettle and the dead- nettle, which some botanists of a much later age brought 1 Meyer, Geach, der Botanik, Vol. I, p. 152. 6 INTRODUCTION together again. When botany began to revive, the writings of Dioscorides were considered by French, German and Italian herbalists as one of the most precious legacies of ancient learning. Pliny’s Natural History is a vast and uncritical encyclopedia, which probably contains not a single new observation in biology. The book has a value, however, if not the kind of value that we expect. Frequent notices of the practical arts of the ancients supply information which can be found nowhere else, and Pliny abounds in that philosophical eloquence with which in a much later age Buffon was wont to dignify his expositions of natural processes. After Pliny the decline of European science, art, literature and civilisation was general and rapid. Galen, who died about 200 a.p., is the last of the ancient anatomists, Oppian (contemporary with Galen) the last of the ancient naturalists. The decline in the fine arts may be roughly estimated by comparing the architecture and sculpture of the age of Constantine with those of the times of Augustus or Trajan. The higher Greek literature ends with Lucian (d. about 200 a.p.), the higher Latin literature with Claudian (d. about 410 a.p.); about 600 a.D. the knowledge of Greek ceased in Western Europe. | During the greater part of a thousand years men despaired of progress and of their own powers. It was widely believed, as it has been in less gloomy ages, that man had declined, not only in knowledge and skill, but in strength, stature and longevity. The earth and even the heavens were thought to show signs of decay. But. 1For ancient opinions on the decay of nature Mayor’s Juvenal (Vol. II, pp. 374-6) may be consulted. To the modern references given by Mayor and Jonston, History of the Constancy of Nature, 12mo. Lond., 1657. Jonston, like Hakewell (quoted by Mayor), takes the cheerful modern view. INTRODUCTION 7 this superstition was at length refuted by undeniable facts. About the millenary year (1000 a.p.) faint signs of improvement began to appear; by the year 1200 it is clear to us, though it may not have been clear to men then living, that the winter-solstice was past. It has ever since been the rule in western Europe that every generation should enlarge the knowledge bequeathed by its predecessor. No doubt the observation of birds, insects and plants never died out among the people, but the scanty literature of the middle ages disdained to learn from the people. Emblems from nature were collected from Latin and Greek authors, used as matter for sermons and commentaries, and carved in wood and stone. The treasury of this sort of learning was Physiclogus, who was neither a man nor a book, but a literature in prose and verse, which lasted for a thousand years and was translated into many languages. In the bestiaries, or books of beasts,! where Physiologus is the spokesman, the reader is told that the lion sleeps with his eyes open, fears a white cock, and makes a track with his tail, which no beast dares to cross; that the crocodile weeps when it has eaten a man; that the little beast called Grylio is so cold as to put out a fire ; that the elephant has but one joint in his legs, and cannot lie down; that the hedgehog sticks ripe grapes upoa its prickles, and so carries them home to its children ; that Cetus (the whale) spreads sand on its back and goes to sleep, floating at the surface of the sea; that mariners mistake it for an island, land 1See Wright’s Popular Treatises on Science written during the Middle Ages (1841, and Langlois, Connaissance de la Nature et du Monde au Moyen Age (1911). The original Physiologus is said to have been written in Greek at Abxandria in the second century, a.p. (Lauchert, Gesch. des Physiologus, 1889) 8 INTRODUCTION upon it, and begin to get ready a meal, when the whale, awakened by the heat of the fire, plunges and drowns them all; that the eagle can look at the sun when it is at the brightest; that aged eagles fly into the east, dip three times into a certain fountain, and become young again; that the pelican, having slain her own young, tears her body with her beak, when the blood, falling upon the young birds, brings them back to life. Even in the times when book-learning was well-nigh extinct, some practical knowledge of plants survived. Agriculture and horticulture were attentively pursued wherever the authority of princes or the sanctity of religious houses afforded protection against lawlessness. From the age of Charlemagne, which some historians have regarded as the nadir of learning and litetature, there have come down to us the great emperor’s edicts for the government of his dominions and estates.1 One of these (Capitulare de villis mperralibus) enumerates the fruit-trees, vegetables, medicinal herbs and flowers which were ordered to be grown in the imperial gardens. Karle* has prepared a list of English names of garden plants, which have come to us from the Latin, not through French or any other modern Romance language, but through intermediate Anglo-Saxon forms. Among the examples are the following :— | Latin. Anglo-Saxon. English. | Cannabis Heenep Hemp. | Caulis Caul Kale. | Crotalum Hratele [Yellow] Rattle. — Febrifugia Feferfuge ——-Feverfew. | 1These are called capitularia, because they were arranged under leads (capitula). They are printed in the Monumenta Germanie Historica, fol. Hanover, 1835 (Legum tom. i.). 2 English Plant Names, sm. 8vo. Oxford, 1880, pp. xlix, l. INTRODUCTION 9 Latin. Anglo-Saxon. English. Ficus Fic Fig. Lactuca Lactuce Lettuce. Linum Lin[seed] Lin[seed ]. Napus Nep [Tur ]nip. Petroselinum Petersilie Parsley. Radix Reedic Radish. It is evident that these names were introduced by gardeners who understood Latin, and there can be little _ doubt that the gardeners were the monks, of whose skill in horticulture there are abundant indications in medieval annals. Medicine was practised during many generations chiefly by the religious and the Jews; relics and holy water were more esteemed than drugs! When physi- - cians became plentiful, they were nearly always astro- _ logers as well, and during a great part of the middle ages all men of science either called themselves astrologers or were popularly supposed to practise astrology and magic. To the thirteenth century are generally ascribed the _ introduction of the mariner’s compass, gunpowder, read- ing glasses, the Arabic numerals and the denary scale. In the fourteenth century trade with the east was extended so far as the Saracen power permitted ; central Asia and even the far east were visited by Europeans; universities were multiplied; popular government, ecclesiastical reformation and national sen- timent gained strength ; the revival of learning and the revival of painting and sculpture proceeded in Italy with unexampled rapidity and force. The fifteenth century is marked by the invention of wood engraving and printing, and by the great geographical discoveries 1Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, Vol. III, p. 412, 10 INTRODUCTION of the Portuguese in the east and of the Spaniards in the west. Though intellectual life abounded during all these years, hardly any attention was paid to science. One or two names indeed, such as those of Roger Bacon and Regiomontanus, show that the aptitude for scientific research already existed, though it was liable to be fatally discouraged by the church (which claimed the exclusive right of teaching), the scholastic philosophy and the popular dread of magic. In the remarkable but still imperfectly understood career of Roger Bacon we note the stimulus which he received from Arabian science, his indignant protests against the ignorance and presump- tion of the scholastics, the interdiction of his lectures at Oxford by one general of the Franciscans, and his imprisonment for many years by another. Brunetto Latino remarked, when he saw Bacon’s magnetised needle pointing to the pole, that no navigator would dare to use it for fear of being called a magician. Science was rarely tolerated in the thirteenth, four- teenth and fifteenth centuries, except when it took its least exciting forms, or was patronised by some great churchman. We form some notion of the state of natural history during the later middle ages by examining the treatise De proprietatibus rerum, written by Bartholomew of England, a mendicant friar, before the middle of the thirteenth century, and translated into English in 1397. We are not surprised to find that Bartholomew had but an indistinct notion of Egypt, India and the “ moun- tains hyperborean,” of dragons, griffins and sirens, but we are amused to see how little pains he took to observe and interpret the commonest natural facts. The succession of colours in the rainbow is given as INTRODUCTION 11 red, blue, green ;1 an oar dipped into water seems to be broken because of the swift moving of the water ; bees are said to load themselves with small stones that they may be more steadfast against blasts of wind (this is taken from Aristotle); the crab, we are told, waits till the oyster gapes, and then puts a stone between the shells, so that he may gnaw the oyster’s flesh ; the fox halts, because his right legs are shorter than the left.’ These things were written about the time when the most beautiful parts of the great churches of York, Lincoln and Salisbury were being reared, and when Merton College was being founded at Oxford. They were not mere popular fables, but the deliberate state- ments of a man learned according to the highest standard of the thirteenth century, who had taught in the great university of Paris. Nor were they rejected by the readers for whom they were written, but copied, trans- lated time after time, re-edited, abridged, and at length multiplied by printing. 1 This succession had a mystical meaning ; red was a symbol of fire, blue of water, green of earth. For more than five hundred years men went on repeating an error which might have been corrected at once by observation of an actual rainbow. 2Some medieval writers say this of the badger. SECTION I. THE NEW BIOLOGY THE REVIVAL OF BOTANY THE emancipation of the biological sciences from tradi- tional learning was long hindered by the pretensions of an obsolete medicine. It is not difficult to understand that the extraordinary complexity of most questions relating to health and disease should have made medicine slow to adopt scientific methods, or that the medical profession should have been sensitive about its reputa- tion and prone to assert its infallibility. In the six- teenth century botany was regarded as a main branch of medicine, and may be said to have constituted nearly the whole of therapeutics. Euricius Cordus, who was in all things a reformer, laboured to convince his hearers and readers that there were three things which the physician was bound to know: the human body, the disease and the remedy, but in practice knowledge of a reputed remedy was held to be the main thing. It was generally believed that for every ill that flesh is heir to, nature had designated some plant as the appropriate cure. Some believed that Providence had caused particular plants to grow in those districts where the diseases which they cured were prevalent... When 17.9. Theodore of Berg-zabern, who is known to science by his Latinised name of Tabernzemontanus. THE REVIVAL OF BOTANY 13 the treatment of diseases by the plants of the country was held to be so efficacious, it is no wonder that botany should have been in high esteem. Every physician professed to be a botanist, and every botanist was supposed to be qualified for medical practice. For example, all the botanists who are named in this chapter practised medicine, except Clusius, whose modern bio- grapher, Morren, notes it as a singular circumstance that he was not a physician. The alliance of botany with medicine provided a livelihood to many a student of plants, brought hearers to his lectures, and helped to sell his books, but it forced him to make pharmacy his main theme. This would have been retarding under any circumstances, all the more when the pharmacy was wholly unscientific, relying simply upon the dicta of ancient and ill-understood authors.? Before discussing the writings of the botanical re- formers it will be useful to glance at those which they sought to replace. About the year 1500 the treatises which most nearly answered to the herbals of a later time professed to indicate remedies for all known diseases, and to trace drugs to their sources. Well-known animals and minerals were added, sometimes on very slight grounds, to the plants which yielded the bulk of the remedies, so that the handbook of medicine became an encyclopzedia of natural history. The most widely circulated of these books was the Ortus (Hortus) Sani- tatis, called in German the Gart der Gesundheit, which had been written in Germany before the invention of printing. ‘The original was in Latin, and addressed to ! Until our own times the dissecting-room and the lectures of the medical school furnished the only regular training for the naturalist, while he found in the medical profession the likeliest means of earning his bread. Baer and many other nineteenth century naturalists were thus compelled to study medicine. 14 THE NEW BIOLOGY the professional classes. After printing became common the Ortus was reproduced many times, often in popular forms, while it was translated or otherwise adapted to the use of different nations. Though “ Dyascorides” is often quoted, as if from the original, the text is really a compilation from medizeval writers, who were themselves compilers. A table of diseases shows where the remedies are described, and takes the place of an index. Plants furnish the bulk of the illustrations ; many are drawn from native species, though not one in three could be recognised by the figure alone. Among the animals are fabulous creatures, such as the basilisk. The figure of a snail resembles a horned quadruped peeping out of a bottle. In the baser editions the pictures are such as a child might draw, and sometimes lose all resemblance to the object. A figure of Greek asphalt, for instance, which was un- natural to begin with, after passing through the hands of several copyists, becomes a mere chance collection of strokes and blotches. Failing natural objects, anything might be inserted which caught the fancy of the draughtsman, a monkey perched on a fountain, casks in a cellar, etc. These books indicate a zero of merit, above which rise, not only all the herbals produced after 1530, but all books which contain observations made direct from nature. Germany soon took the lead in the revival of botany. It was not only Germans who felt the need of improved knowledge. In France Ruel, a physician of Soissons, spent many years upon the elucidation of Dioscorides, and the examination of those native plants which might throw light upon his author. In Italy too scientific 1Free choice of subjects, irrespective of the text and of practical utility, was the long-standing tradition of the illuminators of inital letters. THE REVIVAL OF BOTANY 15 research began to revive. Young naturalists, not only from Italy itself, but from Germany, and now and then one from England, came to Luke Ghini or to some other Italian master to be trained in botany and pharmacy. Pisa, Padua and Bologna had each its botanic garden, and an academy of natural science was founded in Naples. In Italy the new scientific move- ment was soon quenched by the Church and the princes, but the torch of learning had been handed to Germany, and here it was not allowed to go out.’ Along the Rhine, from Switzerland to the Nether- lands, civilisation and industry had long flourished together. On the left bank of the river opulent towns had been built even in Roman times. Centuries after the fall of the empire, great trade-routes, connecting Flanders and the Baltic with Lyons on the one hand and Venice on the other, gave the merchants and manufacturers of the Rhine access to the great markets of the world. Here and in the country further to the east had sprung up that powerful union of seventy cities known in the thirteenth century as the Con- federation of the Rhine; here too in a later age were found influential members of the Hanseatic League. Printing and wood-engraving established themselves in the fifteenth century at Mayence, Strasburg and Cologne. When the Reformation began to stir, the Rhineland, above the point where the river entered the “ priests’ lane,” and became enclosed by the arch- bishoprics of Mayence, Tréves and Cologne, contained many sympathisers with Luther, who spread also east- wards into Hesse and westwards into the Palatinate. 1Eurich Cordus and his son Valerius are among the Germans who visited Italy in the early or middle part of the 16th century for botanical study. The books of Italian writers on botany and pharmacy were often studied in Germany about the same time. 16 THE NEW BIOLOGY With the reform of religion some men combined aspira- tions after an improved social state; others were eager to infuse new life into literature, or to free medicine from the bonds which had long impeded it. Not a few believed, at least in the early stages of the movement, that they were simply labouring to remove the corrup- tions of later ages, and to restore the purity of ancient times. Those who occupied themselves with the reform of medicine made it a duty to go back to Dioscorides, and to clear away the misapprehensions which obscured his teaching. It was easy to show that the apothecaries had on the slightest possible grounds treated common German plants as identical with certain plants of southern Europe, which ancient pharmacists had cele- brated as the source of valuable drugs. While these discussions went on the close study of native species began to spread, and field-botanists multiplied, especially it would seem, in and around Strasburg. Few of them published their observations, but their experience was not altogether lost ; among the first to take advantage of the local facilities for printing were Brunfels and Eurich Cordus. The reform of pharmacy and botany long retained its Protestant character, and till the close of the sixteenth century almost every author of a botanical treatise published in Germany or Flanders was a Protestant. BRUNFELS 17 OTTO BRUNFELS? 1484-1534 Herbarum vive eicones... per Oth. Brunf. 3pts. Fol. Strasburg, 1530-6. Contrafayt? Kreuterbuch... durch Otto Brunfels newlich beschrieben. 2 vols. Fol. Strasburg, 1532-7. Brunfels was born at Mayence, and received an uni- versity education, being destined by his parents for the church. At the age of thirty-seven he found himself in a Carthusian monastery, whose restraints now proved intolerable, for he was strongly impelled to join the new humanist and reforming movement. In 1521, the year of Luther's appearance at the diet of Worms, Brunfels fled from the cloister. He soon found employ- ment as a Lutheran pastor, or as a schoolmaster, but settled at Strasburg in 1524, and henceforth employed his learning, which seems to. have been considerable, in writing for the booksellers. Pedagogy, theology, medicine and botany by turns engaged his attention. It is not easy to understand how he acquired such a knowledge of medicine as procured for him not only the doctorate in medicine of the university of Basle, but _ considerable repute as a physician. An enterprising bookseller of Strasburg, named Schott, engaged him to write a new herbal, which was to take advantage of the new learning, and also of the remarkable improvements in wood-engraving, which had been effected of late years. The first volume appeared only six years after Brunfels’ settlement in Strasburg, so that his 1 Fuller biographical information will be found in a paper by F. W. E. Roth in the Botanische Zeitung, 1899, pp. 191-232. There is an interesting dis- eussion of Brunfels’ botanical work in E. L. Greene’s Landmarks of Botanical History, Smithsonian Collections, pt. 1, 1909, pp. 165-191. ® Contrafayt means portrayed or pictured, as in the inscription, ‘* Albrecht Durer’s Conterfeyt ” (1527). B 18 THE NEW BIOLOGY preliminary botanical studies must have been slight, all the more because botany was only one of his occupa- tions during this busy time. He got help from several botanists, who are known to have worked at the plants found in the country round Strasburg; his own share in the work perhaps consisted largely in incorporating with the information supplied by field-naturalists pass- ages from the Materia Medica of Dioscorides, which had been lately translated into Latin by Ruel and others. Brunfels’ herbal, in Latin and German, is illustrated by near three hundred figures of plants, drawn by Hans Weydiz, a celebrated artist of the time, or by his assis- tants. The plants are shown in clear outline, and are sometimes so faithfully copied that it is still possible to pick out those which were set before the draughtsman in a defective condition. Other figures are less adequate; though the species is often determinable, it is not always possible to make out even the genus. Sometimes the figures and the descriptions do not correspond; thus descriptions of Aristolochia extracted from Dioscorides and Pliny are illustrated by figures of two species of Corydalis. The modern reader will shortly describe Brunfels’ arrangement of plants as haphazard, and such it often is. If we come across the trace of a natural grouping, we shall probably find that it is taken from Dioscorides. Like Dioscorides and the pharmacists who succeeded him, Brunfels is inclined to put together plants which are supposed to share the same properties. But we can only account for some of his sequences by supposing that he inserted the species just as they came in. Brunfels’ Hicones went through several editions, and 1 Greene, loc. cit., p. 173. BRUNFELS 19 its success prompted the issue of a German version, _ which, being ill-fitted for popular use, was never com- pleted. Bock’s herbal was the first to meet the needs of the unlearned. In 1533, when the new herbals were far from com- _ plete, Brunfels was offered the post of town-physician at Berne. He accepted the invitation, and entered upon his new duties, but by this time his course was nearly run; he was soon afterwards struck by mortal illness, and died at the age of forty-six. Brunfels won respect, and made many friends. It is pleasant to find that Bock and Fuchs, both of whom were engaged upon herbals of their own, warmly praised his botanical services, as also did Conrad Gesner. In spite of testimonies like these, we are sometimes disposed to put the question why this old herbal need be studied again. The answer is that by figuring from nature a large number of native plants Brunfels initiated modern systematic botany. Fuchs, Bock, Gesner, L’Obel and many more carried on the work which Brunfels had begun. It was soon discovered that pictures would not suffice without methodical descriptions, that philo- sophical arrangement renders comparison easier and more profitable, and that philosophical arrangement can be attained neither by logic, nor by ingenious contrivance, nor by consideration of the wants and wishes of mankind, but only by patient study of the groups which actually exist in nature. Study of such groups revealed the existence of affinity, a property which, after remaining mysterious during many generations of men, became at last intelligible. _Brunfels, without suspecting it, had set his foot on a new land. 20 THE NEW BIOLOGY HIERONYMUS BOCK} 1498-1554 New. Kreutter Buch von underscheydt, wiirckung und namen der Kreutter, so in teutschen Landen wachsen, &c. Fol. Strasb. 1539. Parts 1 and 2 5 ee Buch, &c. Second edition, with figures. Fol. Strasb. 1546. Part 3, also with figures, was published at the same time. Hieronymi Tragi de stirpium, maxime earum que in Germania nostra nascuntur ... libri tres... interprete Davide Kybero. 4to. Strasb. 1552. Bock, a native of Baden, was destined by his parents for the cloister, but when he grew to manhood, he came, like Brunfels, under the influence of the new doctrines, began to study medicine and botany in addition to theology and philosophy, and at length took the decisive steps of removing to Zweibriicken in the Palatinate, setting up as a schoolmaster, and marrying. It was no doubt an important promotion for him when he was called upon to attend the duke of Zweibriicken as physician, and to supervise his botanic garden. Some years later he was rewarded by a sinecure canonry at Hornbach, a few miles from Zweibriicken. Protestantism was then spreading in all parts of the Rhineland, and in all ranks of society. The dukes whom Bock served, and even the abbot of Hornbach, favoured the Reformation, so that Bock, a married man, who had moreover undertaken the functions of a Lutheran pastor, without apparently any ecclesiastical sanction, was allowed for many years to share the emoluments of an ancient monastic foundation. In spite of his varied employments, for he is believed to have practised both divinity and medicine, he found time for oft-repeated botanical excursions, which he 1 The latest and best account of the life of Bock is that of F. W. E. Roth (Botan. Centralbl., 1898, pp. 265-271; 313-8; 344-7). For information con- cerning the botanical merits of the Krduterbuch E. L. Greene’s Landmarks, pt. 1, pp. 220-64, may also be consulted. BOCK 21 generally made in peasant’s dress, so as to excite little notice. ‘The excursions gradually took a wide range; many places between the Rhine and the Moselle were visited, besides countries as distant as Switzerland and Tyrol. Bock, who seems to have been a sociable, friendly man, became known in some of the Rhenish cities, especially to Brunfels and other botanists of Strasburg ; he corresponded also with Gesner of Zurich. A young man, named Jacob Theodor of Berg-zabern, who was afterwards known throughout Europe as Taberneemontanus, was first a pupil and afterwards an assistant of Bock’s during this Hornbach time. Bock himself tells how his honoured friend Brunfels came out on foot from Strasburg to Hornbach (some sixty English miles) and pressed him to write in the mother- tongue a new herbal for the instruction of the German people. Bock spent some fifteen years amidst these occupa- tions, disturbed only by symptoms of waning health, but about the year 1548 he was called upon to face changes disastrous to his happiness. By this time the herbal in its German form was complete. -The pros- pects of the Reformation in Germany had meanwhile become clouded ; a new duke of Zweibriicken and a new abbot of Hornbach withdrew their support from the Lutheran pastor, who was obliged to remove for a time to Saarbriicken, where the count, whom Bock had treated successfully in grave illness, offered hospitality and countenance. All his ten children except two died before him, and the only surviving son was deprived of the Hornbach canonry, which the father had resigned in his favour.t Amidst calamities like these a wasting ' Bock returned to Hornbach not long before his death, and was buried there; whether he was reinstated as pastor is not known. 22 THE NEW BIOLOGY disease, from which Bock had long suffered, carried him off at the age of fifty-six. The new Kriiuterbuch (parts 1 and 2) appeared about six years after Brunfels’ visit to Hornbach. It was written in German, and at first contained no figures. The inclusion of many more plants, the fuller and more lively descriptions and the homely style gave it a marked advantage over the German translation of Brunfels’ Hicones, which was soon discontinued. The second edition of the Krdéuterbuch, besides a new third part, were made more attractive by the introduction of figures, drawn by David Kandel, a young self-taught artist of Strasburg, who worked under Bock’s eye at Hornbach. The figures are smaller and coarser than those of Brunfels; many are copied from the herbal of Fuchs, which appeared in the interval between Bock's two editions. In front of the illustrated editions of the herbal we find a portrait of Bock at the age of forty-six, drawn by David Kandel. An arch of florid design occupies so large a part of the page that scanty room is left for anything else. The naturalist is shown in half- length side-view, holding a flowering bulb in his hand. The straight hair is combed down to the neck behind, and over the top of the forehead in front; both chin and cheeks are shaven. The features are good, the well-shaped nose prominent, the eyes a little up- turned, the expression grave but pleasing. In the coloured copies all that is attractive disappears. Hieronym: Tragi de stirpium libri tres is a translation of the herbal into Latin by David Kyber of Strasburg, the figures of plants being retained. The Latin trans- lation was never reprinted, but seven editions in German appeared after Bock’s death ; the last bears the date of 1630. BOCK 23 After nearly four hundred years we still read with pleasure Bock’s accounts of the pistillate flowers of the hazel, the deciduous calyx of the poppy, the pistil of the bilberry, the rooting stems of water-lilies, the hooks on the twining stem of the hop, and the shooting-out of the seeds of the wood-sorrel. He notes more dis- tinctly than any other botanist of the time the difference between stamens and styles, but has no true notion of their physiological office, not even recognising that one or both may be found in every flower. Particulars of place and environment are added, and the descrip- tions are enlivened by curious details, which give them in many places a vivacity to which the text of Brunfels or Fuchs makes no approach. Bock’s grouping of plants is largely traditional. He accepts the ancient division into trees, shrubs and herbs. Since he gives no synoptic tables, far less family-names with definitions, it is a matter of conjecture what groups of genera, if any, he regarded as marked out in nature. He inherited from Theophrastus and Dioscorides a few natural groups :—Umbellifers, Thistles, Chicories, Legumina, Labiates, Solanaceous plants, Crucifers, Mallows, Catkin-bearing and Cone-bearing trees, none of them precisely limited, and to this list he added the (unnamed) Borages. He places rosemary and lavender among the Labiates, notwithstanding their woody stem. The nettle and the dead-nettle are described in close succession, though the distinctive generic names of Dioscorides are quoted. We find groups founded on habitat (e.g. water-plants), or on usefulness to man (e.g. kitchen-herbs), or on habit (e.g. Serpentarize or climbers, a group of Bock’s own pro- posing). The special value of floral characters was then unsuspected. 24 THE NEW BIOLOGY In his preface Bock shows the importance of associa- ting related or similar plants, and pours contempt on the alphabetical arrangement. We must not however read the modern meaning into his word affinity. There is no reason to suppose that the notion of a common descent for the pea and the bean, or for rosemary and lavender, had ever crossed his mind.! LEONHARD FUCHS 1501-1566 De Historia Stirpium Commentarii insignes, maximis impensis et vigiliis elaborati, adjectis earundem vivis plusquam quingentis imaginibus nunquam antea ad nature imitationem artificiosius effictis et expressis, Leonarto Fuchsio medico hae nostra etate longe clarissimo autore, &c. Fol. Basil. 1542. Fuchs was born at Membdingen in Bavaria in 1501. His original calling was that of schoolmaster, and his favourite study ancient literature. At the university of Ingolstadt, a stronghold of Catholicism, he made acquaintance with the -writings of Luther, and was thereby led to adopt Protestantism. Having graduated in arts, he studied medicine and took his doctor’s degree in that branch, becoming after a short interval professor of medicine. He was next made physician to the mar- quis of Brandenburg at Anspach, and became favourably 1¢¢ Und hab in gedachten biichern gemeinlich disen Process und Ordnung gehalten, nemlich das ich alle Gewachs so einander verwandt und zugethon oder sonst einander etwas dnlich seind und verglichen zusammen doch under- schiedlich sind. Und den vorigen alten Brauch oder Ordnung mit dem ABC wie das inn den alten Kreutter buchern zu ersehen hindan gestelt. Dann die Gewiichs nach dem ABC in Schrifften zuhandeln gar ein grosse ungleichheit und irrung geberen, &c.” (Bock’s Preface.) The word affinity or some synonym appears in Aristotle (De Partibus, IV, 6, 3), and in the natural history books of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies a.D., such as those of Fuchs, Dodoens, Gesner, Cesalpini, Caspar Bauhin, Grew and Ray. Nowhere is a clear distinction drawn between affinity and general similarity of structure or habit. et —— a a Te FUCHS 25 known by his successful treatment of an epidemic. In 1533 he was invited to resume his professorship at Ingolstadt, but was soon driven away by Jesuit in- trigues, and returned to Anspach. On the death of his patron, the margrave, he accepted a call to the university of Tiibingen, which had just adopted the Reformed faith, and here he remained from 1535 till his death (1566). Among his published works are treatises on medicine and human anatomy. Fuchs’ first contribution to botanical literature con- sisted of critical remarks on medicinal plants written for Brunfels’ Kréduterbuch. He then aspired to produce a herbal of his own, and in 1542 issued his Historia Sturpium, which was immediately translated into German. The text, like that of Brunfels, is drawn chiefly from ancient authors; the descriptions are briefer, and show a much slighter acquaintance with the original texts. The arrangement is alphabetical according to the Greek names of genera. Fuchs says in his preface that he would have liked to associate ‘“ congenerous herbs,” as Dioscorides had done, had such a sequence ' been permitted by the pictures; this excuse is uncon- vincing. Plants are often associated on the ground of a quite superficial resemblance; Viola includes the violet, Hesperis and the snowdrop; Stellaria Holostea and Parnassia come under the Grasses.1_ Fuchs shows 1This remark holds good for early botanists in general. Names like rose and violet had no definite botanical meaning ; the Christmas Rose, the China Rose and the Rock Rose have no affinity with the rose of the hedge, nor with one another; the Dame’s Violet and the Dog’s-tooth Violet no aftinity with the sweet violet and the pansy. In the same way primitive medicine gave the name of Hepatica to an anemone, and also to the cryptogamous Marchantia, _ Of Verbena to Verbena officinalis and also to the groundsel; and of Consolida (healing) to a number of quite different herbs, which agreed only in having a reputation for closing wounds (Greene, Landmarks, pp. 176, 231). 26 THE NEW BIOLOGY little interest in living nature, or in adaptation to environment, takes notice of few rare plants, and does not restrict himself to native species ; he thought chiefly of meeting the wants of the pharmacist. The five hundred woodcuts of the Historia Stirpium probably surpass in artistic quality any long series of botanical figures that has ever been published, though they are not remarkable for minute accuracy. Hach plant fills a folio page, on which no letterpress beyond the name is allowed to encroach. The outlines are clear, and there is little or no shading.t Sometimes but not often the flower and fruit are shown on detached branches; the structure of the acorn is displayed in separate figures; on the other hand the flowers of the nettle are indicated by mere dots. A whole tree from the roots to the top branches may be shown in one view; then the leaves are out of all proportion to the trunk. In the drawing of an entire walnut-tree there are only about a score of leaves, each perhaps one-fifth of the total height; it would of course have been better to show only a single branch, as is done in the case of the savin. Greek vase-painters could draw unmistakable olive-trees, with only one or two leaves apiece, but natural history cannot allow such liberties. Fuchs’ own portrait occupies the frontispiece, while his draughtsmen (Heinricus Fiillmaurer and Albertus Meyer) together with his engraver (Vitus Rodolphus Specklin or Speckle) share a page at the end of the book. | A glossary of difficult terms is prefixed to the Latin Mstoria Sturpium, but omitted in the German trans- 1The practice of drawing plants in outline probably originated in the eolouring of the figures. Early woodcuts are often coloured by means of stencils, but this is never the case with Fuchs’ figures. FUCHS 27 lation. The anthers are called by Pliny’s name of “apices,” but not clearly distinguished from the styles. The “glume” is defined as the sheath which encloses each grain in a grass-spike. The “stipule” is the sheathing leaf of a grass. A bulb is defined as a rounded tunicated root, which is retrograde; Theo- __ phrastus knew better than this. When he comes to explain the botanical umbel, Fuchs, like a true scholar, goes a little out of his way to give the history of the word, quoting the Greek skiadeson and the Latin umbella, “qua mulieres vultum vindicant a sole et zestum arcent.” Cesalpini mentions parasols as being used on journeys, and they are figured in Anglo- Saxon MSS. Fuchs’ letters show that he laboured during many years to extend his Historia Sturprum. In 1565 he was ready to publish three parts of what he charac- teristically describes as an excellent, noble work, con- taining in each part more than five hundred beautiful and carefully drawn figures, together with the histories of the plants. He sought for a wealthy patron to meet the cost, and got the promise of one contribution. But in the following year Fuchs died, and the work was never produced. The manuscript is believed to have been extant many years later, and the engraved blocks were long used to illustrate the works of other botanical authors. It is unpleasant to have to say of an author who rendered real service to botany that his character lacked modesty. Fuchs was in the habit of blowing his own trumpet, and sometimes he blew it loud, as in the title of his great work. He showed no jealousy of other botanists, and often praised what they had done. 28 THE NEW BIOLOGY Father Plumier gave the name of Fuchsia to one of the most beautiful of the garden-flowers which we have received from America. VALERIUS CORDUS 1515-1544 The brief and tragic history of Valerius Cordus (son of the Euricius Cordus already mentioned) can only be glanced at here, because few naturalists can acquaint themselves at first hand with the surviving fragments of his work, which were piously collected by Gesner. Dying at twenty-nine, he had already made his mark in science. He is remembered as the dis- coverer, or one of the discoverers, of sulphuric ether, as the first to say in print that young ferns spring from the light dust borne on the back of the leaves, as one of the first to trace the origin of coal to long-buried vege- tation. The term pollen, which had been used by Pliny as the name of meal or any other kind of fine dust, Cordus applied to the dust emitted by anthers. He has a special name (papilionaceous) for the flower of Legu- minosee (Gesner had already compared pea-blossom to a butterfly).’ | CONRAD GESNER 1516-1565 C. Gesneri Opera Botanica... Omnia ex Bibliotheca D[om.] C. J. Trew nunc primum in lucem edidit et prefatus D[om.] C. C. Schmiedel. 2 pt. Fol. Norimberge. 1751-71. Gesner studied at Strasburg, Paris, Basle and Mont- pellier (under Rondelet), and became skilled in the 1Greene (Landmarks of Botanical History) has given a detailed and appreciative notice of the botanical work of Valerius Cordus. GESNER 29 ancient languages as well as in medicine and natural history. Like all the German and Swiss botanists of his generation, he was a stout Protestant. His own father fell in battle, fighting with Zwingli to defend Zurich against the Catholics of the forest cantons. Conrad Gesner too perished in the service of Zurich. In 1564 the city was ravaged by a plague, which Gesner, who was the public physician, combated suc- cessfully, though to the injury of his health. Next year the plague reappeared, and Gesner as before stuck manfully to his post. This time he did not escape, but was carried off before he had quite reached the age of fifty. Gesner was the most learned naturalist of the six- teenth century, but he was much more than a naturalist. He had been professor of Greek at Lausanne, and good __ judges have reckoned him among the best Greek scholars _ of his age. His Bibliotheca Umversalis, a bibliogra- ' phical account of all writers in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, his Pandecte Universales, a methodical index to all the knowledge recorded in books, and his Mathridates, an attempt to arrange all the languages of the world according to their affinities, are works of vast extent and labour. He only lived to produce one comprehen- sive biological work, his History of Animals, and that was not quite complete. For a great History of Plants, which he was much better qualified to write, he had made preliminary studies of high promise. Among the many proofs of his multifarious know- ledge we may cite his little book on fossils,’ where he discourses upon all things which are dug out of the earth, and figures not only basaltic columns, encrinites, 1 De rerum fossilium, lapidum et gemmarum figuris et similitudinibus Liber. 8vo. Tiguri. 1565. 30 THE NEW BIOLOGY belemnites, &c., but stone-implements and even a lead- pencil! He says that this last is made of what some called English antimony, set in a wooden handle. The figure resembles a modern pencil-case for the waistcoat pocket. Gesner, laborious, learned, enlightened, unselfish, ever zealous to extend the knowledge of nature, had, like Linnzeus two hundred years later, correspondents in every country, and suggested or helped many an inquiry. If somebody was wanted to take up a neglected branch of natural history, or to edit the writings of a naturalist who had been cut off before his time, Gesner, loaded as he was by tasks of his own, was the readiest to lend a helping hand. Belon, Rondelet, Aldrovandi, Valerius Cordus, Caius and Turner are to be found in the long list of those whom he befriended or advised. Even the Congregation of the Index had recourse to his Biblio- theca for information concerning heretical authors, though they ungratefully put him into the list along with the rest. Letters of Gesner give some faint notion of what his History of Plants might have done for botany. In one place he explains that flower, fruit and seed afford better indications of affinity than leaves. It can easily be perceived, he says, by the organs of fructification that Staphisagria and Consolida are of kin to Aconite, &c. He asks a friend to send him a drawing of a tulip-fruit (the tulip was then a rarity in western Europe) to show the arrangement of the seeds, which he wished to figure. He recognises genera, or natural groups of species, as many had done before him, and says that there are hardly any herbs which do not fall into genera of two or more species. The ancients had described one’ gentian, but he knew of ten or more. He distinguished Fa aE eg ci oy > GESNER_ 31 varieties from species, and demanded proof of constancy in the characters before he would allow that they were of specific value. We are told that Gesner had brought together no fewer than fifteen hundred figures, many of them drawn by his own skilful hand, while nearly four hundred had been engraved on wood. The drawings and wood-blocks were handed down after his death from one botanist or publisher to another. Some were used to illustrate Mattioli’s Epitome (1586). At last the collection, sadly diminished, was bought by Christopher Jacob Trew, an eminent physician of Nuremburg, who valued good books of natural history. Trew entrusted the thousand figures which came into his hands to the careful editor- ship of C. C. Schmiedel. Many of Gesner’s drawings were now engraved on copper and coloured after the originals ; some of the woodcuts were printed off, while others, which had suffered injury, were re-engraved on copper. Two great folios, which include the botanical works published in Gesner’s life-time, were thus pro- duced, which give the best notion now to be had of Gesner’s industry and skill as a botanist. In these interesting and often beautiful figures we find details of flowers and fruits never so well presented before. It is a question whether he used lenses or not; sharp sight may perhaps have sufficed. Gesner was so short-sighted as to require concave spectacles for the perception of distant objects. Like another short-sighted naturalist (K. E. von Baer), who was remarkable for his power of distinguishing the minute details of living things, Gesner may have turned the imperfections of his eyes to good account. The pleasing usage of naming the genera of plants after meritorious botanists was introduced by Gesner. 32 THE NEW BIOLOGY It was extensively adopted in a later generation by Father Plumier (1646-1704). Gesner’s History of Animals is noticed elsewhere. His publications, though copious and learned, only partially explain the reverence with which after ten generations naturalists and scholars still regard the name of Conrad Gesner. : MATTHIAS DE LOBEL! 1538-1616 Plantarum seu stirpium Historia... cui annexum est Adversariorum volumen. Fol. Antw. 1576. From the age of sixteen L’Obel was a diligent observer of plants. He betook himself at the age of twenty-seven to Montpellier, in order to study under Rondelet, then at the height of his fame. Here he paid close attention to the plants of Languedoc and the Cevennes, which afterwards yielded him much material for description. Rondelet died in 1566, and his manuscripts were left to L’Obel as his favourite pupil. He did not return home at once, for the terrible Alva was governor of the Low Countries from 1567 to 1573, and many of the unfor- tunate Flemings were glad to take refuge in England. L’Obel was one of these, and his first botanical work? was produced in London. We next find L’Obel in Antwerp, where he practised medicine. His repute 1 Biographies of L’Obel by Edward Morren are to be found in Bull. Fédér. Soc. d’ Horticulture de Belgique, 1875, and in Biog. Nat. de Belgique. 2Stirpium Adversaris nova...autoribus Petro Pena et Matthia Lobelio. Fol. Lond. 1570. Pena had been a fellow-student of L’Obel at Montpellier and a diligent collector of the plants of Languedoc. Legré (La botanique en Provence au X VI¢ siécle, 1899) has shown that the Adversaria was largely the work of Pena. L’Obel and Pena left Montpellier for England together; Pena remained there for several years, and afterwards became very successful as a physician in France, LOBEL | 33 became so considerable that he was made physician to William the Silent. Not long after the assassination of the prince L’Obel was appointed superintendent of the physic-garden set up at Hackney by Lord Edward Zouche. He now busied himself with English botany, and was the first to note several species native to Middlesex. Among the English botanists whose acquaint- ance he made was Gerard, whom he esteemed very lightly. One of L’Obel’s daughters was married to a London citizen (James Coel, of Highgate), and this connexion may have helped to detain him in England ; he died (no doubt in his daughter’s house) at Highgate in 1616. L’Obel can hardly have been an amiable man; he was inclined to boast, and often wrote contemptuously of his predecessors or contemporaries. But he was laborious and sagacious, and botany owes a good deal to him. The Lobelia, named after him by Plumier in 1702, helps to keep his memory fresh. His botanical works (Adversaria, Observationes, Kruydboeck, Icones, &c.) were much esteemed in their day, and went through several editions. The modern reader finds the Latin style dry and clumsy, and the definitions few and obscure, while there is far too much of an obsolete pharmacy. The woodcuts engraved expressly for these works are small and of no great merit. Larger and better ones are often borrowed from the books of Dodoens or Clusius, with both of whom _ L’Obel lived for some years on intimate terms; Chris- ‘ _ topher Plantin, who published for all three, was no doubt glad to repeat in a succession of books the blocks which he had paid for. We shall now notice some features of these volumes which are of biological interest. 0 34 THE NEW BIOLOGY L’Obel makes a distinct advance upon the systems of earlier botanists. Not content with tacitly adopting what he took to be a natural sequence, like the early German botanists, he enumerates in synoptic tables the species of one genus, or the genera of one family. His primary division is the ancient one into trees and herbs ; then the herbs are divided according to the form of the leaves. Division into Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons is foreshadowed by the separation of plants with narrow, simple, parallel-veined leaves from those with broad, reticulate-veined and incised leaves. His system is really based on leaf-form, and he unites clover, oxalis and hepatica merely because all have trifoliate leaves. He sought to proceed from the simple to the complex, and for this reason among others began with the grasses, which he took to be flowering plants of peculiarly simple structure. From the grasses he went on to irids, lilies, &c., being guided, as he says, chiefly by the pointed and simple leaves. Alisma, Sagittaria, some Orchids, &c. are widely separated on account of their broad leaves. The cereal grasses lead in another direction to the Crucifers; here the point of resemblance is suitability for human food. Cabbages are associated with lettuces, which are of like habit and “fruitio,” while both are used in cookery. Though the shrubs and trees are recognised as distinct groups, the shrubby Leguminose are laudably, but incon- sistently, put next to the herbaceous genera. The ferns, even such unusual forms as moonwort and adder’s tongue, are kept together. L’Obel’s works show an extensive acquaintance with the rare plants of Europe, such as Pyrola, which he had found at Berchem near Antwerp, Cypripedium Calceolus from Switzerland and Tyrol, and many more from LOBEL 35 Languedoc or the Cevennes. Sprengel! gives a long list of species which L’Obel was the first to describe. L’Obel has also something to say about the Papyrus antiquorum, which he had seen in the botanic garden of Pisa, about Sarracenia, Tillandsia and other newly imported American plants, about the wheat-trade of Antwerp, the manufacture of beer and the trenching of celery. Drugs of recent introduction are of course noted, and many therapeutical experiments are recorded. He tells with pride of plants brought at great cost to Flanders from Constantinople, Greece, Italy, Asia, Africa and America, and cites among the glories of his native land, the eminent botanists and gardeners which it had produced. The socal place is given to De L’Escluse (Clusius). L’Obel seems to haw been the first naturalist to call attention to the fact that the mountain plants of warm countries descend to low levels further north. His words are :—‘‘ quee jugis montium calidarum regionum proveniunt, eadem in planis, silvis, silvosis et depressis regionum septentrionalium exeunt.”* This observation of L’Obel’s was the starting-point of inquiries which have been pursued with ever-widening grasp to our own time. lLinnzeus® showed that alpine plants are nearly the same all the world over, while Ramond‘ observed that the zones of vegetation on high mountains may answer to horizontal zones bounded by parallels of lati- tude, a relation which Humboldt demonstrated on a far larger scale. 1Gesch. der Botanik, Vol. I, p. 311. 2 Preface to Stirpium Illustrationes, 8 Phil. Bot., § 334. *Ramond, a naturalist of no real weight, had the honour of influencing the geological speculations of Cuvier, and is once mentioned in Darwin's Origin of Species. His Voyages au Mont-Pérdu (1801) has some little historical interest. 36 THE NEW BIOLOGY ANDREA CESALPINI (or CESALPINO) 1519-1603 De Plantis Libri XVI. 4to. Florent. 1583. Little is known of the personal history of Cesalpini. He studied at Pisa (where he was introduced to botany by Luke Ghini, a teacher of great reputation) succeeded Aldrovandi as director of the botanic garden at Bologna, and professed medicine and botany in the university of Pisa, where again he had charge of a botanic garden. In old age he removed to Rome, becoming professor at the Sapienza and physician to the Pope. In Cesalpini’s time and in the very city where he taught, ancient beliefs were for the first time submitted to experimental verification. Galileo, who had attended Cesalpini’s lectures, investigated the swinging lamps of the cathedral at Pisa in 1583, the year in which the De Plantis appeared; in 1588-91 he refuted the Aristo- telian doctrine of falling bodies by dropping weights from the leaning tower. We are not told what Cesalpini and Galileo thought of one another, but it is not difficult to guess. Cesalpini is reckoned among the physiologists who anticipated the discovery of the circulation, though he is not known to have made any experiments of his own; he was also one of the few sixteenth-century naturalists who recognised the real nature of animal and vegetable fossils. His published work shows him to have been an acute, observant man, full of such knowledge as was then accessible, and not afraid to express his opinions, even when they differed from those of the people about him. Could he have realised that in botany as in all natural sciences he was but a be- ginner, he might have done much more than he actually CESALPINI 37 did. But he was confident and over-emphatic. In the dedication of his De Metallicis to the Pope we find a passage which shows that though he claimed for himself that liberty of opinion which the Catholic Church grants to those in whose loyalty it has confidence, he made no ‘secret of his inclination to restrict scientific thought in less orthodox teachers. He repudiates an unnamed author because he held opinions contrary to the prin- ciples of philosophy, and also a8 a man condemned (explosus) by the church. Cesalpini’s De Plantis gives a short account of plant- physiology as understood by a Peripatetic philosopher of the sixteenth century. We find a discussion of the question whether the seat of life is diffused or concen- trated ; it is finally placed just where the stem and root meet, a point which has neither morphological nor physiological importance. The pith, we are told, is the seat of innate heat; this strange belief was founded on the resemblance of the pith surrounded by a cylinder of wood to a spinal cord enclosed by a vertebral column. The flower is said to exist, partly to protect the young fruit, partly of necessity, because the plant becomes turgid with vapour. Plants have no sexes, because in them the genitura is not distinct from the materia. The chief function of the leaves is to shade the buds. Cesalpini’s system of plants has been praised by Ray _ and Linnzus. He threw over the tentative method practised by L’Obel and others, in order to bring for- ward a new and logical method of his own. The ancient division into trees and herbs is of course respected, and 1I suppose that the author aimed at was Bernardino Telesio, who had attacked the doctrines of Aristotle, and tried to supersede philosophy by methodical observation. His treatise De natura rerum juxta propria principia | libri IT (Rome, 1565) was condemned in the Index of Pope Clement VIII, that very Pope to whom Cesalpini dedicated his De Metallicis. 38 THE NEW BIOLOGY the seedless plants, which are imperfect, bred of putre- faction, and intermediate between plants and inanimate things, are separated from the more perfect plants. Then he arranges his flowering herbs by the number of divisions of the seed-vessel, but uses also, without strict subordination, other characters, such as the superior or inferior ovary and the position of the embryo in the seed. These characters, which have proved valuable to later systematists, are not always employed with knowledge. Cesalpini confuses divisions of the ovary with seeds, or even with flowers; he has no conception of any such morphological unit as the carpel of modern botany; and his brief characters drawn from the embryo’ are sometimes unintelligible, all the more because neither figures nor synoptic tables are supplied. The student finds himself compelled at length to depend chiefly on the illustrative genera cited. Thus judged, Cesalpini will be found to have made no addition to the short list of truly natural families already recognised by L’Obel. Instead of increasing the number he destroyed or spoilt some necessary groups, leaving only the Umbelliferee intact. Cesalpini stood aloof from all the botanists of his time, whom he never quotes, and they paid no attention to him. Reftelius in the Amaenitates Academice (who is only a cloak for Linneeus) says truly that Cesalpini dwelt alone in the house which he had built. Cesalpini offers here and there good observations on the biology of plants. He remarks? that ants gnaw the embryos of grains of corn, to hinder them from sprouting when stored underground. He tells how 1It is possible that Cesalpini got the hint of them from Theophrastus. 2 Milian, De nat. animalium, II, 25, may have guided Cesalpini in this passage. CESALPINI 39 weak plants, unable to support their own weight, may clasp other plants with their tendrils, and shows that a tendril may spring from the axil of a leaf, or in the place of a leaf, or from the apex of a leaf. He names clematis as an example of a plant which climbs with the help of its leaf-stalks, ivy as one which climbs by what he calls ‘‘ hooks,” arranged along the stem like the feet of a centipede ; others are said to twine like snakes. He remarks that climbing plants appear to have some power of perception, for they feel about for a suitable support, and grasp it when found (Chap. xi). We find also a good account of the way in which wood-sorrel throws out its seeds, of the creeping stem, flowers and fruit of the white and yellow water-lilies, &. These plants, or most of them, had been carefully studied before Cesalpini by Bock, Fuchs and L’Obel, sometimes by Theophrastus as well. Cesalpini’s account of the seed and seedling is memor- able because he clearly states that in many plants there are two seed-leaves, while in the wheat-grain there is only one. He is further aware that the seed-leaves may contain a store of food, and that in leguminous plants _ they may never leave the seed.’ 1The passages of the De Plantis which treat of the flower and the cotyledons were attentively studied by Linnzus, whose annotations can still be read in the library of the Linnean Society. 40 THE NEW BIOLOGY PIERRE BELON 1517-1564 Les observations de plusieurs singularitez et choses mémorables trouvées en Grece, Asie, Judée, Egypte, Arabie et autres pays estranges redigées en trois livres. 4to. Paris. 1553. L’Histoire naturelle des estranges poissons marins, avec la vraie peinture et description du dauphin. 4to. Paris. 1551. De aquatilibus libri duo cum iconibus ad vivam eorum effigiem. Sm. oblong 8vo. Paris. 1553. Three editions of a French translation, in folio, quarto and octavo, appeared in 1555. One is entitled ‘“‘La nature et diversité des Poissons, avec leurs pourtraicts, &c.” Sm. obl. 8vo. L’Histoire de la nature des Oyseaux, avec leurs descriptions et naifs por- traicts retirez du naturel. Fol. Paris. 1555. Some twenty years after the revival of botany naturalists began to describe and figure direct from the objects the fishes and birds of Europe. Zoological research may have been a little retarded by the absence of that professional motive which impelled physicians to examine closely their native plants. The facilities afforded by the markets, together with the special knowledge handed down, generation after generation, by fowlers, falconers and fishermen, had no doubt their effect in deciding what animals should first be taken in hand. Belon tells us how, when dwelling in foreign cities, he used to study the birds and fishes which were brought to market. During his stay in Padua he was accustomed to leave home every Thursday evening and travel all night by boat, so as to reach Venice next morning. There he stayed on Saturday and Sunday, employing his time with observation of birds and fishes, and discourse with fowlers and fishermen. On Sunday night he took boat again, and was back at his studies by Monday morning. Nothing is said about personal observation of live birds and fishes, but this was not neglected when opportunities offered. BELON 4] The life of Belon was full of labour and excitement. He was born in Maine, near the city of-Le Mans. As _ a young man he was patronised by the Chancellor of _ France, by a bishop, and by two cardinals, Tournon and Chastillon. Thus aided, he went to Germany, where he _ studied botany under Valerius Cordus, among others. After this he set out to explore the Mediterranean countries, travelling in Turkey, Greece, and the Greek islands, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and the Sinaitic Peninsula (1546-9). Shortly after his return he paid a visit to England, where he fell in with the Venetian ambassador, Daniel Barbaro, who showed him drawings of three hundred fishes of the Adriatic, and permitted him to copy them. The rest of the naturalist’s life was extremely unlucky. The French king granted him a pension, which was left unpaid, and Belon was reduced to great straits. At last he was set upon in the Bois de Boulogne and murdered; the assassin was never discovered. The chief writings of Belon are :—(1) His travels, in which he sets down all that he could learn or conjecture respecting the remarkable animals named in ancient authors (infra, p. 54). (2) His dissertation on the dolphin. (8) His book of aquatic animals, which has been cast a little into the shade by the more exact book of Rondelet; and (4) his book of birds, the best which the sixteenth century could produce. At the time of his premature death Belon was translating Theophrastus and Dioscorides. Belon’s dissertation on the dolphin occupies a large part of his Histoire Naturelle des Estranges Povssons Marins. Its primary purpose was to identify and describe the dolphin represented on ancient works of art. The author easily decides that the dolphin of the 42 THE NEW BIOLOGY ancients was the common dolphin of the Atlantic shores, often confounded with the porpoise. ‘True fishes which had been called dolphins, such as the sturgeon, tunny, &e., are figured and shortly described. In a second part the anatomy of the dolphin is discussed ; its brain is said to be very like that of a man; the embryo in the uterus is figured. The hippopotamus is ‘described from a live specimen which Belon had seen in Constantinople, and compared with ancient sculptures. The shells of the argonaut and pearly nautilus are figured and compared. The book on Aguatie Anumals aims at giving by means of descriptions and figures some rough notion of the various creatures which inhabit the waters. Cetaceans, the beaver, otter, seal, water-rat, tortoises, true fishes of many kinds, mollusks, crustaceans and brittle-stars are included. There is also a small admixture of animals which Belon did not profess to have met with, such as the fabled horse of Neptune, the sea-wolf, rather like a hysena, which was thought to haunt the shores of England, and the fish which resembled a monk. LHach animal is shortly described, and its names in different languages are quoted. Identification of the fishes men- tioned by ancient writers is a prominent feature. The illustrations are somewhat rude woodcuts, which never- theless give a fair notion of the different species. There is no regular classification, and hardly any definitions of groups, large or small, but animals which would now be referred to the same class or order are usually kept together. The systematic arrangement indicated by the succession of species is based upon Aristotle. As usual in the works of early naturalists, too much weight is given to the general form and the place of abode. The text is largely a compilation, and most of the figures BELON 43 are believed to have been copied from Barbaro’s drawings. Belon’s History of Birds is the most important of his contributions to natural history, and was during many years the best book on the subject. It is a handsome folio of near 400 pages, illustrated by many hand- coloured woodcuts, one as a rule to each bird that is described. About two hundred birds are included; they are nearly all European, but Belon does not hesitate to describe with them such foreigners as the ibis, the birds of paradise, and parrots. In his preface he claims to be the first to give “naif portraicts des serpents, des poissons et des oyseaux: le naturel desquels nul autre nauroit encor fait voir avant nous.”* His draughts- man was Pierre Goudet, of Paris, whose work does not fully deserve the praise that it receives from Belon. The attitudes are often awkward, and the markings of the plumage are but poorly shown. This was no doubt contrary to the author’s intention, for he says in his preface that birds differ from one another chiefly in colour; “touts ont quasi les iambes, ongles, bec et plumes de mesmes,” which is, of course, far too strong a statement of the case. There is little to mark the scale of the different birds; the ostrich and the sparrowhawk, for instance, are nearly of a size. The descriptions are unmethodical, and often very slight. Belon is not aware that a small difference, if constant, may serve to dis- tinguish one species from another, and the current popular names (in French) are precise enough for all his purposes. Yet he distinguishes a good many kinds or sorts of birds, and brings together all that seem to him generally similar in structure and mode of life. He does his best to amuse his readers by relating bits of his 1Gesner’s bird figures were published in the same year (1555). 4a THE NEW BIOLOGY experience in foreign lands, such as the decoying of sparrowhawks on the Propontis, or by discussing the etymology of the French names of common birds, or by giving the points of a good falcon, or by describing the succession of the dishes at a French banquet, or by explaining why the trail of a woodcock is eatable. A few sentences of “‘ Naturel” (natural history) are often introduced into the description, and we find occasional hints as to the use of birds in medicine, such as that the blood of the partridge is good for sore eyes. Ancient authors are regularly quoted, and pains are taken to identify the birds of which they speak. Fabulous stories are mentioned, though with due scepticism ; Belon does not believe, for example, that the sparrowhawk is the father of the cuckoo, nor that barnacle-geese are gene- rated from floating wrecks (they have been seen, he tells us, to lay eggs); nor that the chameleon feeds on air. What we should now call orders of birds are indis- tinctly recognised, but only as convenient headings. It was far too early for any naturalist to inquire how there come to be natural assemblages of birds, or why one principle of arrangement is to be preferred to another. Belon adopts Aristotle’s groups as far as they go; he recognises the birds of prey, the swimming birds, and the waders with long legs, joining with these last the kingfisher and the bee-eater; his remaining groups are the birds which nest on the ground, then a very miscel- laneous group (crows, pigeons, parrots, &c.), which agree only in being of fair size and nesting in any situation ; his last section consists of the songsters. Tradition com- pelled Belon to put the bat among the nocturnal birds of prey, but he did not really take it to be a bird. In his introduction Belon gives on opposite pages large figures of a human skeleton and that of a bird, RONDELET 45 naming all the principal bones, and thus indicating their homologies. ‘This is an early and interesting example of that comparative method which has since proved so fertile. Belon was much interested in the enrichment of French gardens by new exotic species, and is said to have introduced the cedar of Lebanon into western EKurope. GUILLAUME RONDELET 1507-1566 Libri de Piscibus Marinis. Fol. Lugd. 1554. Universe aquatilium Historie pars altera. Fol. Lugd. 1555. Rondelet was professor of anatomy at Montpellier, then a provincial capital, famous for its medical school. It is only seven miles from the Mediterranean, whose coasts are full in view from the celebrated Promenade de Peyrou. In Rondelet’s day the sea-fisheries were important, and offered good opportunities to an anatomist who sought to enlarge biological knowledge. His repu- tation as a naturalist attracted many students to Mont- pellier; among the number were Dalechamps, Clusius, John Bauhin and L’Obel—a list of great distinction, which might easily be enlarged. With Rondelet, as with other writers of his day, fishes include aquatic animals of every kind. In his own mind he distinguished, as Aristotle had done long before, the blood-holding (vertebrate) fishes from the bloodless (invertebrate), but by treating all together in his anato- mical account, he rendered most of his generalisations unserviceable. Copious extracts from ancient writers weary the reader, and show how imperfectly Rondelet foresaw that his own observations were to lay the 46 THE NEW BIOLOGY foundation of a new ichthyology, which would convert the descriptions of Pliny and Atlian into mere historical curiosities. He discriminates and names such true fishes as were known to him, and often describes in succession several species which are now placed in the same genus or the same family, such as the “ brames de mer” (sea- breams), or the different kinds of Turdus, Raia, and Galeus. The invention of the genus was ascribed by Haller and Linnzeus to Gesner, but it is probably as old as natural history. Aristotle enumerates two or more camels, eagles, kingfishers, tits, woodpeckers, wagtails, thrushes, &c. What is modern is the use of the word genus as a technical term, and the reference of every species to its genus, verbal usages which came in gradually, and were at length formally inculeated by Linnzeus. Rondelet indicates groups more extensive than genera, but without subordination or definition. There are no synoptical tables, and the groups are mere headings. Like other naturalists of that age, he was content to reckon the whales as fishes, though he was well aware of the differences between them. He regularly noted the structure and arrangement of the gills in every true fish that came before him. In these two books nearly two hundred and fifty species are described, most of them being figured, and there is rarely a doubt as to the fish which is meant. The modern names are regularly assigned to his figures in the British Museum Catalogue of Fishes (1859-70). Rondelet was of great use to Willughby and Ray (enfra, p. 112) and through them to later ichthyologists. The task upon which all were engaged proved to be one of unsuspected difficulty. Though Ray, Linnezeus, Cuvier and other zoologists, the strongest of their time, laboured at it, the end has never come in view. It RONDELET 47 seems that the highly specialised and dominant group of Teleostean fishes has become adapted in most intricate ways to the exigencies of aquatic life, and that no simple principle of division is likely to prove natural here, any more than in the class of Birds. Ichthyolo- gists, like ornithologists, can only remove this or that blot, with little hope of complete success, even in the distant future. Yet another book on fishes was brought out nearly at the same time with those of Belon and Rondelet, by Hippolito Salviani (1514-1572), a physician of Rome, whose work, Aquatilium Ammalium [Historia], dated 1554, was only completed in 1558, as the colophon shows. ‘The three authors were all physicians, and all were patronised by Cardinal Tournon. Salviani’s book is chiefly remarkable for its beautiful engravings on copper, which in some copies are delicately coloured. THE ENCYCLOPADIC NATURALISTS OF THE RENAISSANCE We must briefly notice a class of writers who were highly esteemed in their day, though most of them did little to advance natural history, because they relied upon other aids than that first-hand study, which is essential to lasting progress in the interpretation of nature. Hncyclopeedic learning was the passion of sixteenth century scholars, who loved to transcribe copious extracts from ancient authors into their Adver- saria in the hope of some day digesting them into books. Zoology and botany were treated like history or philology by writers who failed to perceive that Pliny and Ailian were by no means trustworthy witnesses on 48 THE NEW BIOLOGY 3, matters of biological fact. The encyclopeedic naturalists — were far more eager to amass information than to sift it. Their works are now and then languidly turned over by some historian of science, who perhaps collects singular fables as indications of the prevailing state of knowledge, until at length he sweeps the whole away as futile, remembering that obsolete encyclopeedias, which reflect, not the opinions of the age in which they were compiled, but a medley of opinions of all preceding ages, are not of much value, even as historical documents. The best of the encyclopeedic naturalists of the Re- naissance were Gesner and Aldrovandi. Gesner stands high among early botanists, as we have elsewhere (supra, p. 30) tried to show. But he was much else besides a botanist, and would have claimed to be called a poly- histor, 2.e. a scholar who set himself to acquire and expound all learning. Gesner’s History of Anvmals! was written in Latin, and appeared volume by volume from 1551 to 1587, the mammals, oviparous quadrupeds, birds, fishes and other aquatic animals being treated in succession. A volume on serpents and a description of the scorpion, which was to have formed part of the insects, were not published till after Gesner’s death. The whole work extended to 4,500 folio pages, and was adorned by several hundred woodcuts. So far as possible, each animal is described under eight heads :—(1) names, in various languages ; (2) native country, external characters, &c.; (3) mode of life; (4) habits and instincts; (5) capture, rearing, domestication, &c.; (6) uses as food; (7) uses as medicine ; (8) literary and moral uses, historical allusions, &c. The primary arrangement is, of course, Aris- totelian, but with a number of changes for the worse; 1 Historia Animalium. 5 vols. Fol. Tiguri. 1551-87. ENCYCLOPAIDIC NATURALISTS OF RENAISSANCE 49 beyond this the animals are taken in alphabetical order, though nearly allied forms are often grouped about a type. There is no regular subordination of groups, no precise nomenclature, no anatomical intro- ductions; the figures are largely borrowed. It gives some notion of the state of zoological knowledge in _ the second half of the sixteenth century that Gesner _ should have grouped the hippopotamus, whales, fishes, _ mollusca, &c. as aquatic animals, that the bat should be described among the birds, and that the scorpion should be represented as possessing elytra. The Hzstory was republished, abridged, and translated, so that it must have been highly esteemed. Not only Gesner but almost all the naturalists of the sixteenth century put the bat among the birds and the whales (sometimes the seals and the hippopotamus also) among the fishes, or at least in a group of aquatic animals, though the more knowing showed that they were aware of the differences which rendered such associa- tions scientifically indefensible. It is surprising that they hardly ever ventured to throw over the medizval grouping and go back to Aristotle, whose name com- manded so much respect. Wotton and Aldrovandi did so in the case of the bats,’ but not even Ray dared to separate the whales from the fishes. What is perhaps the last survival of such a grouping is to be found in Artedi’s Ichthyologia (1738), which was edited by Linneeus. Less known to fame was Edward Wotton (1492-1555), a London physician, who published a Latin treatise De differentus anvmalium (fol. Paris, 1552) nearly at the same time with the first part of Gesner’s History. 1 Wotton treated the bats as mammals, Aldrovandi as intermediate between mammals and birds; Aristotle seems to have hesitated between the two views. D 50 THE NEW BIOLOGY Wotton methodised the zoology of Aristotle, and drew up the first formal classification of animals. His book is sagacious and careful, but dry. It was little read, and exerted no appreciable influence upon the progress of zoology. Adam Lonicer (1528-1586), a physician and botanist — of Frankfort, published a Naturals Historie Opus Novum (2 vols. Fol. Francofurti. 1551), the largest and best part of which is botanical. This work is more remarkable for its longevity than for its quality; it was continually re-edited, and only disappeared from the book-market in the eighteenth century. | Ulysses Aldrovandi of Bologna (1522-1605) was, like © so many other early naturalists, a physician and botanist. At first he pursued many different branches of study, but by the advice of Rondelet selected zoology and — botany as his own special province. Aldrovandi was director of the botanic garden of Bologna, which he had ~ largely helped to found. He was also a diligent col- lector, and bequeathed a museum to his native city. In old age he began to publish an extensive treatise on animals, which was to form part of a still wider scheme.? John Jonston (1603-1675) was a weak successor to — Aldrovandi, from whom he borrowed largely. His illustrated works enjoyed a great reputation, being republished or translated many times. Jonston was of © Scotch descent, though born in Poland; he studied both at Thorn and St. Andrews. To explain how this came about would require a historical discussion, in which the Wyclifites, Hussites and Moravians would all find a place. 1Qnly the birds (Fol. Bononie. 1599-1603) and the insects (1602) appeared during Aldrovandi’s lifetime. The quadrupeds, viviparous and oviparous, the serpents and dragons, the fishes and whales, the bloodless animals and the Dendrologia were edited and published posthumously (Fol. Bononiz. 1606-7). SECTION II. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS (EARLY TIMES TO THE CLOSE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY) Voyaczs of discovery go back to times whose history is inextricably mixed with legend. Phcenician merchants sailed over the Mediterranean, and beyond the pillars of Hercules to the Fortunate Islands and the western __ shores of Spain, bringing to Tyre and Sidon the products of Arabia, Egypt and India, as well as of northern countries rarely visited except by barbarian traders. Herodotus, the first Greek historian, travelled in Persia, Egypt and Scythia, and was able to gratify the curiosity of his countrymen by telling them, among many things of greater importance, about the crocodile of the Nile, and the artificially impregnated date-palm of Babylon. Ctesias, a Greek physician, who had lived at the court of that Artaxerxes, whom Cyrus the younger tried to dispossess, wrote accounts of Persia and India, in which elephants, parrots and bamboos are noticed. Greek armies were led by Alexander to the Punjab, returning by the Indus and the Persian gulf. It is just possible that from this last source of information Aristotle learned what he knew about the anatomy of the ele- phant, and how the Bactrian camel differed from the Arabian. 52 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS In the narrative of the voyage of Nearchus (one of Alexander's generals) from the Indus to the Tigris, mention is made of the tiger, of the cotton-plant and of the use of cotton in weaving, of rice, of silk, of the sugar-cane, of tortoise-shell, and of oriental spices and drugs. The fleets of the Ptolemies made reeular trade-voyages to Arabia, tropical Africa and perhaps to countries yet more remote. Ptolemy Philadelphus set up a menagerie at Alexandria, in which elephants, rhinoceroses, buffaloes and ostriches were kept. Aga- tharcides, an Alexandrian scholar of the second century B.C., described strange animals of Ethiopia, the giraffe, the rhinoceros, the baboon, various monkeys and the spotted hyena. Theophrastus knew something about the banyan-tree, the citron, the tamarind, which was reported to fold up its leaflets at night, and the thorny Mimosa of Egypt, whose leaves droop when touched. Under the Roman empire trade with distant countries was perhaps as much hindered as encouraged by the Roman passion for dominion. Such books as the Natural History of Pliny show that opportunities of enlarging geographical knowledge were not neglected. Roman emperors sent expeditions to the shores of the Baltic for the sake of amber, and to tropical Africa for the sake of birds of rich plumage. Elephants, camelo- pards and ostriches were exhibited and slain in the circus. Ivory, silk, pearls, spices, dyes and drugs were regularly imported. During the long decline which followed the downfall of the empire such knowledge as the ancients had possessed about exotic animals and plants shrank to a meagre stock of perverted recollections. Though the elephant was kept in mind by the bestiaries and the THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 53 first book of Maccabees, it was often confounded with the camel. Monkeys, lions, leopards and lynxes were still well known. Of the acquisitions made between the years 200 and 1000 a.p. none perhaps was more considerable than the importation of the silkworm in the reign of Justinian. Constantinople was during many centuries the great European emporium of eastern wares. The wars of Saracens and Christians did little for geographical knowledge or industry to compensate for the interruption of peaceful intercourse which they created. In the thirteenth century the passionate zeal which had stirred up so many Holy Wars died out, but travel and exploration revived as the progressive movement (see pp. 7, 9) gained strength. Towards the end of the thirteenth century Marco Polo and his companions reached China (Cathay, as it was then called) by land, taking advantage of that relaxation of restrictions which followed upon the conquests of the Tartars. The barriers were soon restored, and China became once more impenetrable. Elsewhere geographical knowledge and commerce advanced steadily. Venice, Genoa and Florence became enriched by eastern trade. Dates, balsams and flax were regularly imported from Egypt; the sugar-cane was planted in the islands of the Mediterranean, and cotton in the south of Europe. In the sixteenth century, and indeed long before, the northern parts of Spain supplied Europe with whale- bone and train-oil, sending their ships out into the Atlantic to capture the Right Whale. 1We read however of an elephant sent to Charlemagne by Haroun-al- Raschid, and of another given to our Henry III. by Louis IX. of France; there is a tolerable though small figure of one in the Meditationes of Johannes de Turrecremata, Rome, 1467. A giraffe was imported by the emperor Frederick II. in the thirteenth century. 54 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS Few of the innumerable pilgrims to the Holy Land brought home anything better than chance scraps of information about the remarkable animals and plants of Syria. Among the most enterprising was one of the latest pilgrims, Bernard de Breydenbach, a canon of Mayence, who travelled in Palestine and Arabia during 1482 and following years. He wrote an account of what he had seen,’ which is illustrated by very curious woodcuts. A painter named Remich made one of the party, and drew several strange animals, among which was a giraffe (“seraffa”); no earlier portrait of this animal, taken from the life, is known. Breydenbach was probably the first traveller whose descriptions and figures were multiplied by the printing-press. Mena- geries, containing remarkable foreign animals, now — began to be common ornaments of the courts of Italian princes. Here would come in order of time the great geo- graphical discoveries of Vasco da Gama and Columbus. We shall however defer this topic until we have tried to show by two or three examples how the new spirit of the Renaissance stirred up explorers to examine more closely the natural products of countries less distant from civilised Europe. Pierre Belon, of whose life a sketch has already been given (p. 40), visited the eastern end of the Mediterranean during the years 1546-9. In 1553 he published a little book called Les observations des plusieurs singularitez et choses memorables trouvées en Grece, Asie, Judée, Egypte, Arabte et autres pays estranges, which was highly esteemed, passing through several editions, and being translated into Latin by the 1Opusculum sanctarum peregrinationum, Mainz, 1486, often reprinted and translated into several modern languages before 1500. Some beautiful manu- script copies also exist. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 55 celebrated naturalist Clusius, as well as into German. A portrait prefixed to the Latin translation shows Belon as a strong and handsome man with short curly hair and full beard; he was only thirty-two when he returned from the east. The Turks were then at the height of their power. Belon, like Busbecq (p. 56), admired their hardihood and temperance in this season of conquest and glory. He describes the menagerie of the sultan, which was kept in an ancient temple at Constantinople. Lions were tied each to its own pillar ; sometimes they were let loose. Besides lions there were wolves, onagers, porcupines, bears and lynxes. Genets were kept in the houses like cats. Belon says that the Turks loved flowers, and were skilful in gardening. Parsley was called macedonico in the market of Constantinople ; hence perhaps the macédowne of modern cookery. Smilax aspera and Tamus communis were used as salads. The giraffe, buffalo, gazelle, chameleon and Egyptian crocodiles are described, some of them being figured. Belon refutes the popular fable that the chameleon lives on air, but was induced to figure a mummied serpent with wings and clawed feet, which, he tells us, was able to fly from Arabia into Egypt. Much to his surprise, he found the skin of a six-banded armadillo, which must have come, he knew, from South America, in the hands of a troop of wandering Turkish drug-sellers ; he secured the specimen and figures it. We find a particularly interesting description of Crete. Belon begins by lamenting that the Greeks, to whom the arts and learning owe so much, held not a foot of ground as their own, the Turks dominating the inland parts, and the Venetians the shores of what had been the Greek empire. The ancient language was 56 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS still spoken ; though corrupt, it was, Belon thinks, more similar to ancient Greek than the Italian dialects to Latin. He notes some customs which still prevail in Crete, such as the practice of sipping wine, but at the same time quenching thirst with large draughts of water. He did not fail to visit the ruins of ancient cities, all of which the Cretans were inclined to call by the celebrated name of Labyrinth. A particular account is given of the mode of collecting the balsamic resin called Ladanum, which was much esteemed by the ancients, and of which Pliny had related a ridiculous fable, viz. that it was combed out from the beards and shaggy legs of goats which had browsed in the forests of Arabia. There is a lengthy description of his discovery of the parrot-wrasse (Scarus), which Aristotle had said (wrongly, as it happens) to be the only fish that ruminates. The Cretan sheep and goat are described and figured. Concerning the latter Belon makes two startling remarks, viz. that its horns may be four cubits . long, and that the number of rings on the horns tells how many years the animal has lived. In this way Belon goes on pleasantly from one country to another, discussing with little method animals, plants, useful arts, drugs, and the ruins of ancient buildings. One heading runs thus :—‘‘ Modestie des soldats tures, et d’un serpent nommé Jaculus, et de Yoiseau nommé Onocratalus.’ Many of the woodcuts are fair, but the long-tailed ichneumon, whose tail is cut. off and shown separately above the body, makes us smile. Augier Ghislen de Busbecq (1522-1592) was a Fleming, who was twice sent by the emperor as ambassador to Soliman IJ. Historians have drawn valuable information from his descriptions of the THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 57 Turks in the days when they threatened all Christen- dom. Being not only learned, but urged by an unbounded curiosity, Busbecq inquired into strange facts of every kind. His love of gardening caused him to send some plants, cultivated by the Turks but un- familiar in Europe, to his correspondents in Vienna. Gilles, in Latin Gillius* (1490-1554), was a naturalist who made the same venture as Belon, and like him, was unkindly treated by fortune, for his calamities hindered him from bringing home the fruits of his toil. He was a native of Alby in Languedoc, who betook himself to the study of the ancient naturalists, but gained practical experience of zoological research by examining the fishes of the Mediterranean and Adriatic. He was patronised by a celebrated free-thinking bishop, Armagnac, and commissioned by the king, Francis L., to visit the Levant in quest of ancient or modern know- ledge. His necessities were not duly provided for, and he found himself left destitute in Asia Minor. All his collections were lost, and he was compelled to enlist in the Turkish army for the sake of a subsistence. At last he made his escape to France (1550), and rejoined his patron, now acardinal, at Rome. Before setting out on his travels Gilles published A¢lian in Latin, rearranging his matter, and identifying the species where possible ; after his return he wrote on the topography of Con- stantinople. Among his publications is a description of an elephant sent from Persia to the sultan.? Gilles met with it and its Hindoo mahout at Aleppo, where the elephant died. He notes the gentleness of the animal, ?This Petrus Gillius must not be confounded with Petrus Gillius or Agidius of Antwerp (14862-1533), who was the friend of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, and edited the first edition of the Utopia. * Hlephanti Descriptio, missa ad R. cardinalem Armagnacum ex urbe Berrhac Syriaca, authore Petro Gillio, 8vo. Lyon. 1562. 58 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS supposed to be not more than four years old, and its love of play. He easily refutes the belief that the elephant had but one joint in its limbs. Finding two live elephants at Constantinople, he measured the larger one. With this insignificant contribution recommences the study of the structure and natural history of the elephant, interrupted for some nineteen centuries. The same little book contains notes on the ‘‘marine elephant” (hippopotamus), which also he saw alive at Constanti- nople, the giraffe, and an ichneumon, which last he kept alive for some time. Siegmund von Herberstein, who visited Moscow in 1516-7 and again in 1526, as ambassador from the emperors Maximilian and Charles V., described Russia for the gratification of the curious." Among other things he mentions some remarkable wild animals, the bison, the elk, the ibex or some allied species, and the onager or wild ass. He says of the Lithuanian bison that it has a mane, long hair about the neck and shoulders and a beard; the eye is large and fierce, as if on fire; the horns are wide apart, and there is a hump on the back (not a real hump, but only high withers) ; the animal smells of musk. Whatever Olaus Magnus (Meoas or Stor) titular archbishop of Upsala (b. 1490, d. 1557) may have been as a describer of national customs and a collector of folklore, he sinks to the medizeval level in his descriptions of animals. His History of the Northern Nations? tells of the glutton, which after gorging himself makes ready for another meal by squeezing his body between two trees, of the kraken, which is able to swallow ships, 1 Rerum Muscoviticarum Commentarii, Fol. Vienna. 1549. Translated as **Notes upon Russia,” 2 vols., Hakluyt Soc. 1851-2. 2 Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus. Fol. Rome. 1555, THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 59 of the sea-serpent a league and a half long, and of swallows which pass the winter at the bottom of lakes and rivers. Some of these fables long continued to figure in natural history books. The interest with which Europe received the announce- ment of a new continent across the Atlantic was heightened by the report that it was peopled by strange animals and plants, unknown to ancient or modern naturalists. The species of North America, it has since been discovered, for the most part belong to genera or families which occur in Europe or temperate Asia, but the West Indian islands, Brazil and Mexico (and it was these of which the Spanish navigators brought intelli- gence) possess a far more peculiar fauna and flora. On his return from his first voyage (1493) Columbus exhibited to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, not only six Indians waiting to be baptised, but live parrots and a few stuffed animals. In subsequent voyages he paid such attention to natural history as his troubled and wandering life permitted.1 The Decades of Peter Martyr Anglerius? were a chief source of information to the readers of Kurope during the early years of the sixteenth century.* Anglerius had never crossed the Atlantic, but his official position as chronicler of Indian affairs and member of council for the Indies made him acquainted with every new exploration. He 1Humboldt has remarked the closeness of Columbus’ observation of all natural phenomena. Among other things he noted the solitary seed of Podocarpus, an aberrant South American conifer. Hardly any American explorer before Joseph de Acosta, he adds, showed any power of generalising the facts of observation, except Columbus (Hxamen Critique, Vol. III, pp. 20 foll.). The Letters of Columbus do not seem to me to bear out the statement as to his frequent and close observation of natural objects, 2So named from his birth-place, Anghiera on Lake Maggiore. ® De Orbe Novo Decades, Alcala, 1516. There is a translation into Italian in the third volume of Ramusio. 60 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS had entertained in his own house Columbus, Sebastian Cabot and other well-known navigators, and took a lively interest in their enterprises. Moreover, he could write from scanty materials interesting sketches of what had been seen in the New World, and these sketches, when collected into Decades, circulated far and wide. He tells how Pope Leo X. liked to read them to his sister and the cardinals.t_ No marvel of the animal life of America interested early explorers more than the opossum, which figures in several narratives. Anglerius describes it as a creature which had the snout of a fox, the tail of a monkey, the ears of a bat, the hands of a man and the feet of an ape. It climbed trees, and carried its young in a pouch, like no other known animal, The first man to set down in writing something like a connected account of the natural history of the New World was Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes (1478-1557). Oviedo had in his youth served as page to Prince Juan, son of Ferdinand and Isabella. In 1513 he was sent out to America as inspector of mines, and after this he served the crown in various capacities, residing long in Hispaniola, of which he was alealde. On his retirement from foreign service he acted as chronicler of the Indies. Oviedo laboured during a great part of his life at a General and Natural History of the Indies? A summary of this was published in 1526, and the first part of the full history in 1535. The whole is now accessible in print. West Indian Mammals. We are told by Oviedo that when Hispaniola (also called Hayti and St. 1Letter of Anglerius, Dec. 26, 1515. 2 Historia general y natural de las Indias. Fol. Salamanca, 1535. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 61 Domingo) was first visited by Europeans, it contained five animals (he means mammals), besides snakes, &c. Four of the five were called by Indian names, Hutia, Chemi, Mohui, Cori, the fifth kind being the native dog. It would require an intimate knowledge of the native mammals, and especially of their quality as food, to identify all of these by means of Oviedo’s descriptions, for though he tells us which were good to eat, he says little about teeth and claws, which are more serviceable in the determination of species. Of the native dogs he says that the Indians used to rear them in their houses, but that at the time of writing none were left. They were of all colours; some were smooth-haired, others woolly like sheep. ‘The ears were erect. The dogs of the Indians were used in hunting, but were not equal to those which had been brought from Spain. They were dumb, and did not howl or bark when beaten. The Tapir. Oviedo’s Danta or Beori (Indian name) must be the tapir, but the description is very vague. We are told that it was as big as a mule, that its skin was dark, and that it had no horns. The flesh was good to eat, and the feet delicious when boiled for twenty-four hours. The animal was hunted with dogs, and had to be hindered, if possible, from entering water, where it became formidable. The Sloth. According to Oviedo the sloth takes a day to travel fifty paces. Its legs cannot support its weight, and the body trails on the ground. It climbs trees, gripping the boughs with its long claws, and sings by night, uttering six notes in regular descending order. It will remain on a tree-top for many days together, and no one knows what it feeds on, but since it keeps its head turned towards the wind, Oviedo thinks that it must live on air. Such tales as these were often repeated 62 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS by naturalists, some of whom, like Ulloa, had seen a live sloth, while others, like Buffon, had not. Buffon severely criticises Nature for turning out a creature so ill-equipped and so wretched. At last Charles Waterton showed that the sloth is by no means the pitiable object which Buffon and his forerunners had painted; it is in all respects well-adapted to its mode of life, and only becomes grotesque or unhappy when removed from its accustomed haunts, and hindered from using its natural powers. The Anteater. Of the ant-bear, as he calls it, Oviedo says that it has the skin of a bear, a long snout and no tail! Itis defenceless, though it sometimes bites (Oviedo seems not to be aware that the anteater has no teeth). It feeds on ants (really on termites), which it manages to secure in spite of the strength of their habitations. In South America, Oviedo explains, the ant-hills are as high as a man, and being alternately moistened by rain and baked by the sun, become as hard as stone. The entrance is close to the ground, and so small as to admit nothing bigger than an ant. But the ant-bear finds cracks on the surface of the fortress, into which it inserts its tongue; by continual licking these are widened more and more until an effective breach is made. He knows nothing of the use of the great claws in demolishing an ant-hill, or in self-defence. The Manatee. Oviedo describes this animal as a fish, though he is aware that it has a leathery, not a scaly, skin, and teats for suckling its young. Birds. Oviedo gives Spanish names to the birds of the West Indies and South America, entertaining little suspicion that they were distinguished by peculiarities more important than differences of size or colour. Lively descriptions are met with in his pages, as when he says THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 63 of the humming-birds that they are no bigger than the top of the thumb, and when plucked, only half as big ; that they fly too fast for the movements of the wings to be followed by the eye, and when first seen are taken for hornets. Nest and bird together, he goes on, may weigh no more than twenty-four grains, while the feet and claws are as delicate as in the miniatures of an illuminated prayer-book. The plumage is of all gay colours, such as green and gold, and the bill is as fine as a needle. Though so small, they are bold enough to fly at the eyes of anyone who tries to plunder their nests. It is easy to imagine the delight with which such particulars were read for the first time. American Plants. Many edible and medicinal plants are described, among the rest, maize, cassava, the pine- apple and the prickly pear. We are told of the singular efficacy of a prickly pear poultice in curing fractured limbs, and of the edible fruit. The carmine colouring matter is also noticed, but no mention is made of the cochineal insect. India-rubber balls are said to be used in an Indian game.! Oviedo’s figures of animals and plants are very rude, but much allowance must be made for the clumsiness of the wood-engraver.? Maize, pine-apple, cacti, &c. are represented for the first time in a printed book; the manatee is one of the few animals figured. 1This last I quote from Darmstiidter’s Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, having failed to verify his reference, or to discover the passage in the enormous and unindexed volumes of the Madrid edition of Oviedo. The first mention of a lead-pencil occurs in Gesner’s little book on fossils (supra, p. 30), but the first mention of india-rubber as useful for erasing pencil marks is as late as 1770 (see Thorpe’s Priestley, p. 72). *This clumsiness will strike any reader who recollects the high quality of the wood-engraving executed in Germany, Holland and Flanders during the first quarter of the sixteenth century ; Italy and France were not far behind. The reproductions of Oviedo’s figures in Ramusio are much better executed than the originals. 64 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS As a naturalist (I have not read his civil history) Oviedo is not considerable. He does not claim to possess any special gifts, training or experience ; indeed we may say that in his time there was no instance of a man who confined himself to so narrow a department of learning as natural history. He writes merely as one who was well acquainted with tropical America, had observed the things about him, and had noted all that was told him. Pliny and Albertus Magnus were still authorities, while the Hlucidarius and the Ortus Sanitates, though packed with fables, furnished a large part of the natural knowledge of the reading public. But the spirit of enlarged curiosity was abroad, and although Oviedo shared many beliefs at which we cannot but smile, he had the thirst for knowledge which pro- perly belongs to a contemporary of Copernicus and Regiomontanus, of Brunfels and Bock, of Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Durer, of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. Oviedo exhibits the simplicity of Herodotus; Acosta, who comes next before us, possesses the higher quality of thoughtfulness ; exactness we must not expect for another hundred years or more. ee Acosta’s Natural and Moral History of the Indies, a concise but interesting sketch of the natural pheno- mena, useful products and native tribes of America, was first published in Latin at Salamanca in 1588. It was so well received that it was quickly translated into Spanish, with large additions. The History, thus recast, was three times reprinted in Spain, and translated into Italian, Dutch, French, German and English.’ The author, Joseph de Acosta, was a Jesuit father, who — had sailed to Cartagena in 1570, being then about thirty — 1Grimston’s translation of 1605 has been reprinted, with introduction and notes by the Hakluyt Society, 1880. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS _ 65 years of age. He was set over the Jesuit missionary stations in Peru, and resided for many years at their chief settlement, Juli, on Lake Titicaca, from which he ultimately removed to Lima. He sailed to Mexico in 1583, and returned to Spain in 1587. His last years were spent at Valladolid and Salamanca, where he presided over Jesuit colleges, and he died at Salamanca in 1600. | Acosta sets out by proving that the same sky which over-arches Europe extends all the way to America. The glorious Chrysostom had indeed maintained a contrary opinion, but Acosta had sailed as far as the tropic of Capricorn, and seen the northern constellations gradually sink as the southern cross rose. He explains the motion of the heavenly bodies by supposing that the star-sphere revolves about the immovable, spherical earth, just what his contemporary, Tycho Brahe had taught in the same year (1588). Another preliminary question which Acosta feels bound to discuss is the question how America became peopled. Since all men are descended from Adam, the first human inhabitants of the New World must have been derived from the eastern hemisphere. They could not have crossed the ocean, for they had no compass. But the tribes of men are only part of the problem; America has its animals also, some of them large and ferocious. Saint Augustine? had long before pointed out that the presence of such animals in islands is a great difficulty; he thought it possible that they might either have swum across from the mainland, or sprung out of the earth, or even have been carried across by those who took delight in hunting. Acosta rejects all these explanations; he cannot suppose that 1 De Civitate, lib. XVI, cap. vii. E 66 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS animals could swim across the Atlantic, nor would men have tried to carry fierce beasts across in ships, nor does he think it conformable to nature and the government established by God that lions, tigers and wolves should be engendered of the earth, like rats, frogs, bees and other imperfect creatures. His own solution is much more probable than any of the alternatives of Augustine, viz., that the continents of the Old and New Worlds meet or nearly so, perhaps towards the north pole, where the maps of Acosta’s day showed a great widening-out of America. In another place Acosta shows that those who main- tain that the quadrupeds now peculiar to America were created there are at variance with the history of the creation and the deluge. For why should it have been necessary to preserve the animals in the ark, if they could be created anew as required, and how could the sacred history affirm that all was made and finished in six days, if other animals of high grade were still to be created? We are bound therefore to suppose that the peculiar animals of America, such as the alpaca and the llama, came from the Old World. Perhaps all the animals dispersed gradually after the subsidence of the deluge, when such as found countries well suited to their mode of life survived; the rest perished. In the end every region became populated by animals well adapted to the local conditions, and not found else- where. Every race, he goes on, not only of animals but of men, shows peculiarities which are not essential, but accidental, differences of colour, stature and so forth; some apes have tails, some none; some sheep are short- haired (bare, Acosta says), others fleecy; some are long-necked, others short-necked. But such “acci- THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 67 dental” differences can never, he thinks, account for the “essential” differences between the animals of America and those of Kurope. It may be doubted whether any speculator who accepted the literal truth of the book of Genesis could have framed a better explanation of the observed facts. Acosta smiles at Aristotle and other ancient philo- sophers, who had taught that the torrid zone was un- inhabitable by reason of its heat. I have lived there a long time, he said, and found it very pleasant. Only after much learned disquisition does he bring out one very material fact. Equatorial America is traversed by one of the loftiest mountain-ranges in the world, and Acosta spent most of his time in Peru at a greater elevation than the highest summits of the Pyrenees. But even the shores of equatorial America are habitable, as he shows. His discussion of the trade-winds is based upon solid facts, and his explanation is quite tolerable, though he is of course wrong in attributing them to the diurnal motion of the celestial spheres, which carry the atmo- sphere round with them. Certain plants and animals of Peru and Mexico are described briefly, especially such as are important to man. We miss some remarkable features of the flora and fauna; there is, for example, no mention of the great cactuses, nor of the many singular water-birds of the mountain-lakes, such as Lake Titicaca; nor of opossums, which abound, not in the mountains (most familiar to Acosta), but in the wooded plains; the condor is dismissed in a few words. Acosta would have written a very big book if he had told all that he knew. The notices of maize, potatoes, cassava, tomatoes, bananas, cotton, and pine-apples we may pass by as long 68 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS familiar. Of cacao (our cocoa) Acosta says that it was much used in Mexico for the making of chocolate, which had been a favourite drink long before the arrival of the Spaniards; it was not grown in Mexico, but imported from Central America; cocoa-seed passed as money among the Indians. Chili peppers (Capsicum) were a favourite condiment, added to many dishes. The leaves of the Peruvian coca (Erythroxylon) were chewed as a stimulant, like the betel of equatorial Asia. The Mexican pulque, the fermented juice of the agave, is - described. Prickly pears and the cochineal which is found on them, the iron-wood which sinks in water, and the brazil-wood used in dyeing are among the curiosities of which Acosta speaks. The Indians grew pulse, whether native or introduced from Europe Acosta does not know. Ginger had been already brought from the Kast Indies to Hispaniola, where it multiplied greatly, and the sugar-cane was extensively planted in Peru, Mexico and the West Indian Islands; the canes were crushed by machinery. In the passion-flower people found emblems of the crucifixion ; Acosta remarks that they were not wholly wrong, but that some piety is required to believe it all. Monkeys. Acosta says that he saw on the isthmus of Panama monkeys tying themselves together by their tails for the purpose of crossing a river. This story, retold by Ulloa,’ who gives an engraving of the monkey- chain, has been repeated in many popular books of natural history. Humboldt? says that though he had opportunities of observing thousands of the howler- monkey, which is named as forming a chain, he places no confidence in such tales. 1 Viage a la America meridional. Madrid. 1748. Vol. I, pp. 144-9. 2 Personal Narrative, Eng. Trans., Vol. II, p. 264. ee Pee ae, a