Text-fig. 38. “Anemone trifolia” [Dodoens, Pemptades, 1583].
Charles de l’Écluse [or Clusius[12]] (Plate [VII]) was born at Arras in the French Netherlands in 1526; like Dodoens, he passed the closing years of his life at Leyden. He studied at Louvain, and other universities, including Montpelier, where he came under the influence of the botanist, Guillaume Rondelet, who also numbered d’Aléchamps, de l’Obel, Pierre Pena and Jean Bauhin among his pupils. De l’Écluse was an enthusiastic adherent of the reformed faith, to which he was converted by the influence of Melanchthon, and he suffered religious persecution, which brought even actual martyrdom to some of his relatives. Though he did not himself lose his life, he was deprived of his property, and, between poverty and ill-health, his career seems to have been a melancholy one. He passed a nomad existence, attached at one time as tutor to some great family, while, at others, he was occupied in writing or translating for Rondelet, Dodoens or Plantin, or undertaking precarious employment at the court of Vienna. The University of Leyden finally appointed him to a professorship. It is interesting to note that he paid more than one visit to England, and that he was intimate with Sir Francis Drake, who gave him plants from the New World.
De l’Écluse had a reputation for versatility scarcely exceeded by that of his contemporary, the “Admirable” Crichton. He is said to have had a wide knowledge of Latin, Greek, French, German, Flemish, Spanish, law, philosophy, history, geography, zoology, mineralogy and numismatics, besides his chosen subject of botany. Since his botanical début was made as the translator of Dodoens, we may with reason look upon him as a disciple of the latter.
The first original work de l’Écluse produced was an account of the plants which he had observed while on an adventurous expedition to Spain and Portugal with two pupils. This was so successful botanically that he brought back two hundred new species. The description of his finds was published by Plantin in 1576, under the title of ‘Rariorum aliquot stirpium per Hispanias observatarum Historia.’ Wood-blocks were engraved purposely for this book (see Text-figs. [39], [59] and [98]), but, for the confusion of the bibliographer, some of them were also used to illustrate Dodoens’ work in the interval while the Spanish flora of de l’Écluse awaited publication. In 1583 appeared our author’s second work, which did the same service for the botany of Austria and Hungary as the previous volume had done for the botany of Spain. These two works, together with some additional matter, were republished in 1601 as the ‘Rariorum plantarum historia.’ In this book, the species belonging to the same genus are often brought together, but, beyond this, there is little attempt at systematic arrangement.
Text-fig. 39. “Lacryma Iob” = Coix lachryma-Jobi L., Job’s Tears [de l’Écluse, Rariorum ... per Hispanias, 1576].
De l’Écluse was weak in the synthetic faculty, his strength lying rather in his powers of observation. Cuvier reckons that he added more than six hundred to the number of known plants. It is characteristic of his versatile mind, that his botanical interests were not confined, like those of most of the early workers, to flowering plants. A manuscript is preserved in the Leyden Library[13] containing more than eighty beautiful water-colour drawings of fungi, executed under the direction of de l’Écluse, by artists employed by his great friend and patron, Baron Boldizsár de Batthyány. This gentleman is said to have been so enthusiastic a botanist, that he set a Turkish prisoner at liberty, on the condition that he should obtain plants for him from Turkey.