Advances in botany

Over the period 1530–40, German theologian and botanist Otto

Brunfels published the two volumes of his Herbarum vivae eicones,
a book about plants, which, with its fresh and vigorous illustrations,
contrasted sharply with earlier texts, whose authors had been
content merely to copy from old manuscripts. In addition to books
on the same subject, Hieronymus Bock (Latinized to Tragus)
and Leonhard Fuchs also published about the mid-1500s
descriptive well-illustrated texts about common wild flowers. The
books published by the three men, who are often referred to as the
German fathers of botany, may be considered the forerunners of
modern botanical floras (treatises on or lists of the plants of an area
or period).

Throughout the 16th century, interest in botanical study also existed

in other countries, including the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy,
and France. During that time there was a great improvement in
the classification of plants, which had been described in ancient
herbals merely as trees, shrubs, or plants and, in later books, were
either listed alphabetically or arranged in some arbitrary grouping.
The necessity for a systematic method to designate the increasing
number of plants being described became obvious. Accordingly,
using a binomial system very similar to modern
biological nomenclature, the Swiss botanist Gaspard
Bauhin designated plants by a generic and a specific name.
Although affinities between plants were indicated by the use of
common generic names, Bauhin did not speculate on their common
kinship.

Pierre Belon, a French naturalist who traveled extensively in

the Middle East, where he studied the flora, illustrates the wide
interest of the 16th-century biologists. Although his botanical work
was limited to two volumes, one on trees and one on horticulture,
his books on travel included numerous biological entries. His two
books on fishes reveal much about the state of systematics at the
time, including that of not only fishes but also other aquatic
creatures such as mammals, crustaceans, mollusks, and worms. In
his L’Histoire de la nature des oyseaux (1555; “Natural History of
Birds”), however, in which Belon’s taxonomy was remarkably
similar to that used in the modern era, he showed a clear grasp
of comparative anatomy, particularly of the skeleton, publishing the
first picture of a bird skeleton beside a human skeleton to point out
the homologies. Numerous other European naturalists who traveled
extensively also brought back accounts of exotic animals and plants,
and most of them wrote voluminous records of their excursions.
Two other factors contributed significantly to the development of
botany at the time: first was the establishment of botanical
gardens by the universities, as distinct from the earlier gardens that
had been established for medicinal plants; second was the collection
of dried botanical specimens, or herbaria.

It is perhaps surprising that the great developments in botany

during the 16th century had no parallel in zoology. Instead, there
arose a group of biologists known as the Encyclopedists, best
represented by Conrad Gesner, a 16th-century Swiss naturalist, who
compiled books on animals that were illustrated by some of the
finest artists of the day (Albrecht Dürer, for example). But because
the descriptions of many of the animals were grossly inaccurate, in
many cases continuing the legends of the Greeks, apart from
their aesthetic value the books did little to advance zoological
knowledge.