12 Dr. Smitu’s Introductory Difcourfe. 
good obfervations, has been often miftaken for an Englifhman ; 
but although he fpent the greater part of his life here, he was born 
in Flanders. - 
It would be unpardonable if I were to finifh this period of the 
hiftory of our fcience without mentioning Fabius Columna, who 
firft gave copper plates of plants ; and thofe of an almoft unrivalled 
degree of accuracy, drawn and engraved by his own hand. In his 
Phytobafanos, publifhed at Naples in 1592, and again at Florence in 
1744, he has taken infinite pains, and fhown great fagacity, in deter- 
mining fome plants of the ancients, and has dete&ed innumerable 
errors in Pliny and other authors, His Ecphrafis publifhed feveral 
years afterwards is a larger work, and contains a large number of 
new plants, diftinguifhed and figured with the greateft accuracy. 
He is likewife the author of a curious and learned work on the 
Purpura of the ancients. All thefe books, efpecially the firft, are 
very rare. Columna, an able critic himfelf, was criticifed in his 
turn by one far inferior, Aldinus in his Hortus Farnefianus, printed 
at Rome 1625; a work in which however there are fome good 
figures of rare plants, and which is not commonly to be met with. 
The inftitution of the academy of the Lyncæi at Rome in 1603 
deferves to be remarked, as that fociety was the firft of the kind, 
and has been in fome meafure the model of all the prefent literary 
focieties in Europe. Its chief promoter and perpetual prefident was 
Frederick Caefius, a young Roman nobleman of great fcience. 
Among the names of thofe who compofed it we find Fabius Co- 
lumna and the great Galileo, a circumftance perhaps more likely to 
immortalize its memory than the medals which were ftruck upon 
its eftablifhment. This inftitution died with its noble founder in 
1630. 
'The number of authors who had written on plants without any 
fyftem or method in the fixteenth century, and tbe confufion of 
names 
