4 Dr. Suitn’s Iniroductory Difcourfe. 
nal regulations of the ftate, and the fofter arts of peace, become 
more interefting to thofe who have talents for cultivating them. 
A part of the community being fufficient to fupply the whole with 
the neceffaries of life, the occupations of the reft becoming voluntary, 
are as various as the virtues and vices, taftes, genius and abili- 
ties of mankind; and the more a people are refined and enlight- 
ened, the more various and the more diftin&ly marked are the pur- 
fuits of individuals. 
The early hiftory of fcience informs us rather of peculiar acquire- 
ments by which certain nations diftinguifhed themfelves from the 
reft, than of the general ftock of knowledge then in the world. 
Thus we are told of the fkill of the Egyptians in aftronomy, to 
which they were peculiarly led by their manner of repofing on open 
terraces under a cloudlefs fky. But we are not to conclude that 
this fcience had never been cultivated by any people before, nor 
that the Egyptians, and all the reft of the world, had lived totally 
void of curiofity, and blind to every thing around them, till their 
attention was excited by the trivial circumftance above mentioned. 
We learn from the Old Teftament, which if it were merely an 
human work would be the moft venerable monument in the world, . 
that Natural Hiftory was very early one of the {ciences in the higheft 
eftimation. Without examining what was the precife degree of 
Solomon’s fkill in this fcience, the manner in which his botanical 
knowledge is mentioned in the Bible, proves that to have been in 
thofe days the moft efteemed perhaps of all learning whatever. 
Yet where are the records of its progrefs? How totally is the 
knowledge of thofe ages and of numberlefs others loft to us! 
As botany and aftronomy have been among the earlieft purfuits of 
mankind, fo they have been prepofteroufly combined together, and 
connections frequently imagined between certain ftars and parti- 
cular plants. This is one of thofe inftances, but too numerous in 
the 
