Leonhard Fuchs [or Fuchsius], the third of the Fathers of German Botany (see Frontispiece), belonged to the same generation as Hieronymus Bock, though he was a little younger and produced his chief work three years later. He was born in 1501 at Membdingen in Bavaria, and at an early age he became a student of the University of Erfurt, where he is said to have taken a bachelor’s degree in his thirteenth year! After a period of school teaching, he resumed his studies, this time at the University of Ingolstadt, where he devoted himself chiefly to classics, and became a Master of Arts. After this he turned his attention to medicine, and took a doctor’s degree. At Ingolstadt he came under the influence of Luther’s writings, which won him over to the reformed faith. Fuchs began to practise as a physician at Munich, but in 1526 he returned to Ingolstadt as Professor of Medicine. He seems to have been of a restless temperament, which was probably accentuated by the persecution to which his protestant opinions exposed him. His career for more than forty years consisted of periods of active practice, alternating with periods of university teaching. In 1535 he was appointed to a professorship at Tübingen, and, while he held this post, he declined a call to the University of Pisa, and also an invitation to become physician to the King of Denmark. It is clear that, both as a physician and a teacher, he was in great demand. He acquired a widespread reputation by his successful treatment of a terrible epidemic disease, which swept over Germany in 1529. A little book of medical instructions and prayers against the plague, which was published in London in the latter half of the sixteenth century, shows that his fame had extended to England. It is entitled, ‘A worthy practise of the moste learned Phisition Maister Leonerd Fuchsius, Doctor in Phisicke, most necessary in this needfull tyme of our visitation, for the comforte of all good and faythfull people, both olde and yonge, both for the sicke and for them that woulde avoyde the daunger of contagion.’ [Illustration: Text-fig. 30. “Brassicæ quartum genus” = Cabbage [Fuchs, De historia stirpium, 1542]. _Reduced._]