Dr. Smitn’s Introductory Difcourfe. Pts 
pofes of public utility, to which indeed all treafures of fcience ought 
to be devoted. 
We muft now make a paufe in the hiftory of botany. Notwith- 
ftanding the labours of the Bauhins feemed to promife new vigour 
to this lovely fcience, it languifhed for nearly half a century after 
the time in which they lived. Not that there were no botanical 
writers, nor any collectors of plants in all that period, for there 
were a confiderable number of both, as well as feveral writers on the 
materia medica. Hernandez was fent to South America by Philip Il. 
at a vaft expence, but the fruit of his labours is one of the worft 
books in botany. The Italians puzzled themfelves and their readers 
about opobalfamum and the ingredients of the mithridate; and a 
number of inferior writers appeared in different parts of Europe, 
efpecially in Germany, whofe names and merits I might be excufed 
mentioning; even if on this occafion Ihad much more time allowed 
me. 
I muft only except Jungius, who in his Doxofcopiæ Phyficz 
Minores has given great proofs of botanical fagacity, and has thrown 
out fome hints, of which following botanifts, and among them 
Linnzus himfelf, has probed with great advantage. Jungius died 
in 1657. 
Our countryman Parkinfon was | alfo an es of great origi- 
nality and obfervation, much fuperior in this refpeét to Gerard, or 
his commentator Johnfon, although his figures are inferior to theirs. 
I (hall profit of this interval to review the progrefs of zoology from 
the middle of the fixteenth to the end of the feventeenth century. 
It is remarkable that a. part of natural hiftory, fo evidently the 
moft important and the moft interefting to man, who is himfelf at 
the head of the animal creation, fhould have lain fo long unculti- 
vated. From the time of Ariftotle to Gefner and Aldrovandus, 
little or no improvements were made in the knowledge of animals, 
nor with refpeét to claffification was any alteration attempted till 
the time of Ray. The Ariftotelian divifion of animals into vivi- 
parous 
