Switzerland, Genoa, Venice, Augsburg, Nurnberg, were at this time in a most favorable position for students. The largest trade of the world, from the East Indies, passing through these cities made them the most important centres of trade. The celebrated house of the Fuggers, in Augsburg, possessed the whole north of South America, a country larger than Europe; and it was therefore easy for them to collect in their princely mansions the wealth and curiosities of the world.
The desire to possess the largest collections increased in a way easily to be understood, especially as the invention of the printing-press had now afforded facilities for making the facts known to the world in a very short space of time. As the trade was in the hands of merchants, of course the collections were in their hands also, or in those of private students more or less widely known, as, for instance, Agrippa, Monardus, Paracelsus, Valerius Cordus, Hieronymus Cardanus, Matthiolus, Conrad Gesner, Agricola, Belon, Rondelet, Aldrovand, Thurneisser, Ortelius, from Italy, France, Switzerland, and Germany. England, too, was not behindhand, and Hackluyt gives an index of private collections in that country. The arrangement and contents of these collections are given in printed lists, the first known of which is that by Samuel Quickelberg, a learned physician of Amsterdam, published in 1565, in Munich. Shortly after, Conrad Gesner published the catalogue of the collection of Johann Kenntmann, a prominent physician in Torgau, Saxony. The whole collection contained in a cabinet with thirteen drawers, each with two partitions, about sixteen hundred objects: minerals, shells, and marine animals; and yet it was thought to be so rich that students made long journeys to see it, and Kenntmann stated that the objects were collected at such an expense as few persons would be able or willing to afford. Similar catalogues are published by Mercati, from Rome, Imperati, from Naples, Palissy, from Paris, and Thurneisser, from Berlin.
I cannot omit here to mention that nearly all interest shown in science was manifested by Protestants, the few honorable exceptions being mostly priests, who understood the times, and the necessity of being always among the foremost, in order not to lose their ascendency. The followers of Loyola were, soon after the institution of the order, eager enough to gain distinction even here. Following the history of our subject, our attention is called to the very striking fact that all departments of science before the Reformation fell gradually into the power of the predominant
