Volume 1

The early naturalists : their lives and work (1530-1789) / by L.C. Miall.

  • Louis Compton Miall
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The early naturalists : their lives and work (1530-1789) / by L.C. Miall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    44/418 page 28
    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. Eying 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- minosse (Gesner had already compared pea-blossom to a butterfly).1 CONRAD GESNER 1516- 1565 C. Gesneri Opera Botanica. .. Omnia ex Bibliotheca D[om.] C. J. Trew nunc primum in lucem edidit et praefatus D[om.] C. C. Schmiedel. 2 pt. Fol. Norimbergae. 1751-71. Gesner studied at Strasburg, Paris, Basle and Mont¬ pellier (under Rondelet), and became skilled in the 1 Greene (Landmarks of Botanical History) has given a detailed and appreciative notice of the botanical work of Valerius Cordus.
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