independent research,
with Reason for guide, and Faith for aim."

Around Rondelet, in those years, sometimes indeed in his house--for
professors in those days took private pupils as lodgers--worked the group
of botanists whom Linnaeus calls "the Fathers," the authors of the
descriptive botany of the sixteenth century. Their names, and those of
their disciples and their disciples again, are household words in the
mouth of every gardener, immortalised, like good Bishop Pellicier, in the
plants which have been named after them. The Lobelia commemorates Lobel,
one of Rondelet's most famous pupils, who wrote those 'Adversaria' which
contain so many curious sketches of Rondelet's botanical expeditions, and
who inherited his botanical (as Joubert his biographer inherited his
anatomical) manuscripts. The Magnolia commemorates the Magnols; the
Sarracenia, Sarrasin of Lyons; the Bauhinia, Jean Bauhin; the Fuchsia,
Bauhin's earlier German master, Leonard Fuchs; and the Clusia--the
received name of that terrible "Matapalo," or "Scotch attorney," of the
West Indies, which kills the hugest tree, to become as huge a tree
itself--immortalizes the great Clusius, Charles de l'Escluse, citizen of
Arras, who after studying civil law at Louvain, philosophy at Marburg,
and theology at Wittemberg under Melancthon, came to Montpellier in 1551,
to live in Rondelet's own house, and become the greatest botanist of his
age.

These were Rondelet's palmy days. He had got a theatre of anatomy built
at Montpellier, where he himself dissected publicly. He had, says
tradition, a little botanic garden, such as were springing up then in
several universities, specially in Italy. He had a villa outside the
city, whose tower, near the modern railway station, still bears the name
of the "Mas de Rondelet." There, too, may be seen the remnants of the
great tanks, fed with water brought through earthen pipes from the
Fountain of Albe, wherein he kept the fish whose habits he observed.
Professor Planchon thinks that he had salt-water tanks likewise; and thus
he may have been the father of all "Aquariums." He had a large and
handsome house in the city itself, a large practice as physician in the
country round; money flowed in fast to him, and flowed out fast likewise.
He spent much upon building, pulling down, rebuilding, and sent the bills
in seemingly to his wife and to his guardian angel Catherine. He himself
had never a penny in his purse: but earne