The method of Cæsalpinus was not, at first, generally adopted. It had, indeed, some disadvantages. Employed in drawing the boundary-lines of the larger divisions of the vegetable kingdom, he had omitted those smaller groups, Genera, which were both most obvious to common botanists, and most convenient in the description and comparison of plants. He had also neglected to give the Synonyms of other authors for the plants spoken of by him; an appendage to botanical descriptions, which the increase of botanical information and botanical books had now rendered indispensable. And thus it happened, that a work, which must always be considered as forming a great epoch in the science to which it refers, was probably little read, and in a short time could be treated as if it were quite forgotten.
In the mean time, the science was gradually improved in its details. Clusius, or Charles de l’Ecluse, first taught botanists to describe well. “Before him,” says Mirbel,[56] “the descriptions were diffuse, obscure, indistinct; or else concise, incomplete, vague. Clusius introduced exactitude, precision, neatness, elegance, method: he says nothing superfluous; he omits nothing necessary.” He travelled over great part of Europe, and published various works on the more rare of the plants which he had seen. Among such plants, we may note now one well known, the potato; which he describes as being commonly used in Italy in 1586;[57] thus throwing doubt, at least, on the opinion which ascribes the first introduction of it into Europe to Sir Walter Raleigh, on his return from Virginia, about the same period. As serving to illustrate, both this point, and the descriptive style of Clusius, I quote, in a note, his description of the flower of this plant.[58]
[56] Physiol. Veg. p. 525.
[57] Clusius. Exotic. iv. c. 52, p. lxxix.
[58] “Papas Peruanorum. Arachidna, Theoph. forte. Flores elegantes, uncialis amplitudinis aut majores, angulosi, singulari folio constantes, sed ita complicato ut quinque folia discreta videantur, coloris exterius ex purpura candicantis, interius purpurascentis, radiis quinque herbaceis ex umbilico stellæ instar prodeuntibus, et totidem staminibus flavis in umbonem coeuntibus.”
He says that the Italians do not know whence they had the plant, and that they call it Taratouffli. The name Potato was, in England, previously applied to the Sweet Potato (Convolvulus batatas), which was the common Potato, in distinction to the Virginian Potato, at the time of Gerard’s Herbal. (1597?) Gerard’s figures of both plants are copied from those of Clusius.
It may be seen by the description of Arachidna, already quoted from Theophrastus, ([above],) that there is little plausibility in Clusius’s conjecture of the plant being known to the ancients. I need not inform the botanist that this opinion is untenable.
[379] The addition of exotic species to the number of known plants was indeed going on rapidly during the interval which we are now considering. Francis Hernandez, a Spaniard, who visited America towards the end of the sixteenth century, collected and described many plants of that country, some of which were afterwards published by Recchi.[59] Barnabas Cobo, who went as a missionary to America in 1596, also described plants.[60] The Dutch, among other exertions which they made in their struggle with the tyranny of Spain, sent out an expedition which, for a time, conquered the Brazils; and among other fruits of this conquest, they published an account of the natural history of the country.[61] To avoid interrupting the connexion of such labors, I will here carry them on a little further in the order of time. Paul Herman, of Halle, in Saxony, went to the Cape of Good Hope and to Ceylon; and on his return, astonished the botanists of Europe by the vast quantity of remarkable plants which he introduced to their knowledge.[62] Rheede, the Dutch governor of Malabar, ordered descriptions and drawings to be made of many curious species, which were published in a large work in twelve folio volumes.[63] Rumphe, another Dutch consul at Amboyna,[64] labored with zeal and success upon the plants of the Moluccas. Some species which occur in Madagascar figured in a description of that island composed by the French Commandant Flacourt.[65] Shortly afterwards, Engelbert Kæmpfer,[66] a Westphalian of great acquirements and undaunted courage, visited Persia, Arabia Felix, the Mogul Empire, Ceylon, Bengal, Sumatra, Java, Siam, Japan; Wheler travelled in Greece and Asia Minor; and Sherard, the English consul, published an account of the plants of the neighborhood of Smyrna.
[59] Nova Plantarum Regni Mexicana Historia, Rom. 1651, fol.
[60] Sprengel, Gesch. der Botanik, ii. 62.
[61] Historia Naturalis Brasiliæ, L. B. 1648, fol. (Piso and Maregraf).
[62] Museum Zeylanicum, L. B. 1726.