[1387] Hist. Naturelle, Premier Discours. The truth is that all Buffon’s censures on Aldrovandus fall equally on Gesner, who is not less accumulative of materials not properly bearing on natural history, and not much less destitute of systematic order. The remarks of Buffon on this waste of learning are very just, and applicable to the works of the sixteenth century on almost every subject as well as zoology.
[1388] Collections of natural history seem to have been formed by all who applied themselves to the subject in the sixteenth century; such as Cordus, Mathiolus, Mercati, Gesner, Agricola, Belon, Rondelet, Ortelius, and many others. Hakluyt mentions the cabinets of some English collectors from which he had derived assistance. Beckmann’s Hist. of Inventions, ii. 57.
Botany; Turner. 30. A more steady progress was made in the science of botany, which commemorates, in those living memorials with which she delights to honour her cultivators, several names still respected, and several books that have not lost their utility. Our countryman, Dr. Turner, published the first part of a New Herbal in 1551; the second and third did not appear till 1562 and 1568. “The arrangement,” says Pulteney, “is alphabetical according to the Latin names, and after the description he frequently specifies the places and growth. He is ample in his discrimination of the species, as his great object was to ascertain the Materia Medica of the ancients, and of Dioscorides in particular, throughout the vegetable kingdom. He first gives names to many English plants; and allowing for the time when specifical distinctions were not established, when almost all the small plants were disregarded, and the Cryptogamia almost wholly overlooked, the number he was acquainted with is much beyond what could easily have been imagined in an original writer on his subject.”[1389]
[1389] Pulteney’s Historical Sketch of the Progress of Botany in England, p. 68.
Maranta; Botanical Gardens. 31. The work of Maranta, published in 1559, on the method of understanding medicinal plants, is, in the judgment of a later writer of considerable reputation, nearly at the head of any in that age. The author is independent, though learned, extremely acute in discriminating plants known to the ancients, and has discovered many himself, ridiculing those who dared to add nothing to Dioscorides.[1390] Maranta had studied in the private gardens formed by Pinelli at Naples. But public gardens were common in Italy. Those of Pisa and Padua were the earliest, and perhaps the most celebrated. One established by the Duke of Ferrara, was peculiarly rich in exotic plants procured from Greece and Asia.[1391] And perhaps the generous emulation in all things honourable between the houses of Este and Medici led Ferdinand of Tuscany, sometime afterwards near the end of the century, to enrich the gardens of Pisa with the finest plants of Asia and America. The climate of France was less favourable; the first public garden seems to have been formed at Montpellier, and there was none at Paris in 1558.[1392] Meantime the vegetable productions of newly discovered countries became familiar to Europe. Many are described in the excellent History of the Indies by Hernando d’Oviedo, such as the Cocos, the Cactus, the Guiacum. Another Spanish author, Carate, first describes the Solanum Tuberosum, or potato, under the name of Papas.[1393] It has been said that tobacco is first mentioned, or at least first well described by Benzoni, in Nova Novi Orbis Historia, (Geneva, 1578).[1394] Belon went to the Levant soon after the middle of the century, on purpose to collect plants; several other writers of voyages followed before its close. Among these was Prosper Alpinus, who passed several years in Egypt, but his principal work, De Plantis Exoticis is posthumous, and did not appear till 1627. He is said to be the first European author who has mentioned coffee.[1395]
[1390] Sprengel Historia Rei Herbariæ (1807), i. 345.
[1391] Id. 360.
[1392] Id. 363.
[1393] Id. 378.
[1394] Id. 373.