De l’Écluse was weak in the synthetic faculty, his strength lying rather in his powers of observation. Cuvier reckons that he added more than six hundred to the number of known plants. It is characteristic of his versatile mind, that his botanical interests were not confined, like those of most of the early workers, to flowering plants. A manuscript is preserved in the Leyden Library[13] containing more than eighty beautiful water-colour drawings of fungi, executed under the direction of de l’Écluse, by artists employed by his great friend and patron, Baron Boldizsár de Batthyány. This gentleman is said to have been so enthusiastic a botanist, that he set a Turkish prisoner at liberty, on the condition that he should obtain plants for him from Turkey. De l’Écluse seems to have been a man of wide friendships, and his botanical correspondence was very large. He did much for horticulture, and is called by his friend, Marie de Brimen, Princesse de Chimay, “le père de tous les beaux Jardins de ce pays.” He deserves especial gratitude for one benefit of a very practical nature, namely the introduction of the Potato into Germany and Austria. It is worthy of note that de l’Écluse, unlike the majority of the herbalists, was not a physician, and although he laid considerable stress on the properties of plants, he was not preoccupied with the medical side of the subject. He studied plants for their own sake, and abandoned the futile effort to identify them with those mentioned by the ancients. The third of the trio of botanists whom we are now considering is Mathias de l’Obel [de Lobel or Lobelius], who was born in Flanders in 1538, and died in England, at Highgate, in 1616 (Plate VIII). He studied at Montpelier, under Guillaume Rondelet, who, finally, bequeathed to him his botanical manuscripts. Here also he became acquainted with a young Provençal, Pierre Pena, with whom he afterwards collaborated in botanical work. De l’Obel took up medicine as his profession, and eventually became physician to William the Silent, a post which he held until the assassination of the Stadtholder. Later on, he and Pena came to England, probably to seek a peaceful life under the prosperous sway of Queen Elizabeth, which was so favourable to the arts and sciences. Their principal work was dedicated to her, in terms of hyperbolic praise. De l’Obel seems to have been well received in this country, for he was invited to superintend the medicinal garden at Hackney, belonging to Lord Zouche, and he eventually obtained the title of Botanist to James I. [Illustration: _Plate VIII_ MATHIAS DE L’OBEL (1538-1616). [Engraving by François Dellarame, 1615. Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum.]]