122 Harrison
specimen that answered to the description. Thus scholars whose original
interests had been solely philological found themselves developing an
interest in actual animals and plants.
Correct identifi cation was particularly crucial for plant species, for in
order to prescribe cures physicians needed to be able to identify from the
Latin nomenclature the appropriate local species. English divine and nat-
uralist William Turner (1508?–1568), observing that existing herbals were
“al full of unlearned cacographees and falselye naminge of herbes,” set
himself the task of correcting such defi ciencies.^15 His Libellus de re herbaria
novus (1538) was a lexicon of herbs that listed Latin names of herbs in al-
phabetical order along with their variants, with English and Greek equiva-
lents. Turner had resorted to identifying entries in the Greek texts through
fi eldwork, and his herbal not only included the local names but was the
fi rst herbal in England to include local species previously unmentioned in
Greek and Latin texts. When Turner shifted his attention to the study of
birds, he encountered many of the same problems. Very few local species
had received mention in the classical sources, and fi eldwork was called for
to remedy the defi ciencies. Similar programs were undertaken on the Con-
tinent by Conrad Gesner, Hieronymous Bock (1498–1554), and Leonard
Fuchs (1501–1566).^16 Such scholars found themselves not merely repro-
ducing the descriptions of the ancients but imitating their methods.
The need to supplement the ancient catalogs of creatures was made all
the more necessary by the voyages of discovery. The animals and plants of
the New World issued a serious challenge to the monopoly over natural
history held by the ancients. Explorer Amerigo Vespucci observed of the
fauna of the new world, “Pliny did not touch upon a thousandth part of
the species of parrots and other birds and the animals too which exist in
those same regions.”^17 This may have been something of an exaggeration,
but nonetheless, improvements in navigation had resulted in a vast ex-
plosion of zoological data. While the hundreds of new species of animals
provided delights for the curious, of more immediate practical import
were new plants that promised new cures. In Joyfvll Nevves out of the Newe
Founde Worlde (1577), Nicholas Monardes set forth “the rare and singular
vertues of diuerse and sundrie Hearbes, Trees, Oyles, Plantes, and Stones,
with their applications as well for Physic as Chirurgerie.”^18 Works such as
these, when combined with the publications of local botanists, point to a
dramatic growth in botanical knowledge during this period. It is estimated
that between 1550 and 1700, the number of known plants increased at
least fourfold.^19 In the seventeenth century, the invention of the micro-
scope also opened up new vistas, bringing to light innumerable creatures
of unimaginable variety. Had Aristotle been alive in the seventeenth cen-