greater part of the territory we inhabit, has been as unknown to us as are Persia and China.
Europe, mistress of the nations by which the rest of the globe is peopled, has not neglected these countries, but has sent her naturalists to examine them. The travellers, however, who perambulated the Peruvian territory with this intention, prior to the year 1770, made but small advancements in knowledge. The more ancient of them, for want of a due method in arranging their collections, were obliged to bring them within a very narrow compass, to avoid confusion [1]. Those who succeeded them, although possessed of all the requisite notions to class and arrange a great number of specimens, did not profit adequately by their talents, either because they limited their inquiries exclusively to the coast[2], or if
- ↑ Among these travellers, the first, in point of time, is the before-mentioned Pedro De Osma, by profession a soldier, who visited Peru a very short time after the conquest. He described several plants in such a way as to prove that he was not deficient in talents. The second is Father Joseph De Acosta, whose natural history has procured him the title of the Spanish Pliny. He came to Peru about the year 1572, that is, forty years after the death of Atahuallpa, the event by which the epoch of the conquest is established. The third is Doctor Mathias De Porres, physician to the household of the then viceroy of Peru, somewhere about the year 1615. He wrote a work on the virtues of all the fruits and seeds of this kingdom, which was printed at Lima in 1621. He was likewise the author of another work, entitled Concordancies Medicinales (Medicinal Concordances), in which he touched on many of the plants of Peru that possess particular virtues. The fourth and fifth are the Licentiates Calderon and Robles, who wrote, in conjunction, a treatise on the plants of Peru.
- ↑ In the years 1709-10 and 11, Father Louis Feuillé made several excursions along the coasts of Peru, and delineated and described, according to the system of Tournefort, many of the plants which are there found, as may be seen in his diaries.
