, in Latin Clusius, an eminent botanist, was born at Arras, in French
, in Latin Clusius, an eminent botanist, was born at Arras, in French Flanders, on Feb. 19, 1526, and was educated at Ghent and Louvain, in the languages, jurisprudence, and medicine, in which last faculty he took a degree, but without any view to practice. At the age of twenty-three he began his travels, and pursued in them all the study of botany, to which he was extremely partial. He visited England three times, and in all his journeys cultivated the acquaintance of the learned in his favourite science. He also not only collected and described a number of uew plants, but made drawings of several with his own hand. In 1573 he was invited to Vienna, by the emperor Maximilian II. with whom, as well as with his son, afterwards the emperor Rodolphus II. he was in great favour, and was honoured by the former with the rank of nobility. In 1593, the sixty-eighth year of his age, he was chosen professor of botany at Leyden, where he resided in great reputation till his death, April 4, 1609. At his funeral, in St. Mary’s church, Leyden, a Latin oration in his praise was delivered by the rector of the university. With respect to hodily health, Ecluse was unfortunate beyond the usual lot of humanity. In his youth he was afflicted with dangerous fevers, and afterwards with a dropsy. He broke his right arm and leg by a fall from his horse in Spain, and dislocated, as well as fractured his left ankle at Vienna/ In his sixty-third year he dislocated his right thigh, which, being at first neglected, could never afterwards be reduced, and he became totally unable to walk. Calculous disorders, in consequence of his sedentary life, accompanied with colic and a hernia, close the catalogue of his afflictions. Yet his cheerful temper and ardour for science never forsook him, nor did any man ever enjoy more respect and esteem from those who knew him.