6 Dr. SMITH’! Introductory Difcour fe. 
lived before or after him, and which borrowed from the other, the 
learned are not agreed, nor 1s it of much confequence to the re- 
putation of either. Diofcorides has had perhaps no great injuftice 
done him by a celebrated modern writer, who ftyles him ‘ a great 
compiler of receipts." In-fa&t his works are nothing elfe than a 
materia medica, in which he has enumerated all the natural bodies 
known at that time to have been ufed in medicine, with their ima- 
ginary virtues, but with fo little judgment, that it were charitable 
to fuppofe he meant only to collect the opinions of others, without 
ever attempting to exercife that faculty. How he came to be 
called the father of botany is wonderful to me. It is lefs extraordi- 
nary that he fhould, after the revival of learning, have had in- 
numerable commentators, becaufe his fhort and imperfe& defcrip- 
tions would afford ample fcope to thofe who imagined all human 
wifdom to be contained in the obfcure works of men who had lived — 
in the world a few ages before themfelves. 
That age of commentators we muft now confider. I purpofely 
país over thofe. times of darknefs which followed the ruin of the 
Roman Empire, during which, if there were any fhadow of fcience 
in the world, it was among the Arabians, and they cultivated 
Natural Hiftory only as a branch of medicine. Thofe who with 
to ftudy this part of the hiftory of botany, will find ample fatif- 
fa&ion in Haller's Bibliotheca Botanica, where they may alfo fee 
an account of all the Greek and Roman authors who have at all 
touched on this branch of Natural Hiftory; and whom I have 
avoided mentioning, not only that I might keep within the bounds 
I had prefcribed to myfelf, but becaufe the labours of thofe 
writers do not appear to have contributed to the knowledge we 
now pofleís. 
When learning began to raife its drooping head in the fifteenth 
century, thofe fciences of which moft traces were found in the 
writings 
