[862] ix. 10.
Ruel. 19. Ruel, a physician of Soissons, an excellent Greek scholar, had become known by a translation of Dioscorides in 1516, upon which Huet has bestowed high praise. His more celebrated treatise de Natura Stirpium appeared at Paris in 1536, and is one of the handsomest offsprings of that press. It is a compilation from the Greek and Latin authors on botany, made with taste and judgment. His knowledge, however, derived from experience, was not considerable, though he has sometimes given the French names of species described by the Greeks, so far as his limited means of observation and the difference of climate enabled him. Many later writers have borrowed from Ruel their general definitions and descriptions of plants, which he himself took from Theophrastus.[863]
[863] Biogr. Univ. (by M. du Petit Thouars.)]
Fuchs. 20. Ruel, however, seems to have been left far behind by Leonard Fuchs, professor of medicine in more than one German university, who has secured a verdant immortality in the well-known Fuchsia. Besides many works on his own art, esteemed in their time, he published at Basle in 1542 his Commentaries on the History of Plants, containing above 500 figures, a botanical treatise frequently reprinted, and translated into most European languages. “Considered as a naturalist, and especially as a botanist, Fuchs holds a distinguished place, and he has thrown a strong light on that science. His chief object is to describe exactly the plants used in medicine; and his prints, though mere outlines, are generally faithful. He shows that the plants and vegetable products mentioned by Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Hippocrates, and Galen had hitherto been ill known.”[864]
[864] Biogr. Univ. (by M. du Petit Thouars.)]
Matthioli. 21. Matthioli, an Italian physician, in a peaceful retreat near Trent, accomplished a laborious repertory of medical botany in his Commentaries on Dioscorides, published originally, 1544, in Italian, but translated by himself into Latin, and frequently reprinted throughout Europe. Notwithstanding a bad arrangement, and the author’s proneness to credulity, it was of great service at a time when no good work on that subject was in existence in Italy; and its reputation seems to have been not only general, but of long duration.[865]
[865] Tiraboschi, ix. 2. Andrès, xiii. 85. Corniani, vi. 5.
Low state of zoology. 22. It was not singular that much should have been published, imperfect as it might be, on the natural history of plants, while that of animal nature, as a matter of science, lay almost neglected. The importance of vegetable products in medicine was far more extensive and various; while the ancient treatises, which formed substantially the chief knowledge of nature possessed in the sixteenth century, are more copious and minute on the botanical than the animated kingdom. Hence we find an absolute dearth of books relating to zoology. P. Jovius de Piscibus Romania is rather the work of a philologer and a lover of good cheer than a naturalist, and treats only of the fish eaten at the Roman tables.[866] Gillius de Vi et Natura Animalium is little else than a compilation from Ælian and other ancient authors, though Niceron says that the author has interspersed some observations of his own.[867] No work of the least importance, even for that time, can perhaps be traced in Europe on any part of zoology, before the Avium præcipuarum Historia of our countryman Turner, published at Cologne in 1548, though this is confined to species described by the ancients. Gesner, in his Pandects, which bear date in the same year, several times refers to it with commendation.[868]
[866] Andrès, xiii. 143. Roscoe’s Leo X. ubi suprà.
[867] Vol. xxiii Biogr. Univ. Andrès, xiii. 144.