Dr. Smitn’s Introductory Difcourfe. 29 
fea was in a very flourifhing ftate under the care of the celebrated 
Miller, and that of Mr. Sherard at Eltham contained one of the 
choiceft collections in Europe. But botanifts were almoft at a ftand 
about arrangement. All the different fyftems which had been 
propofed, however fpecious in univerfity lectures, having been 
found very infufficient for the purpofes of practical botany, the 
Ícience was again in danger of relapfing into anarchy and confufion, 
and botanifts were almoft overwhelmed with the riches which daily 
flowed in upon them. 
In this ftate of things a new turn was given to the fcience of 
botany, and indeed to all natural hiftory, by the publication of the 
Syftema Nature and Fundamenta Botanica of Linnzus in 1735. 
Nor were the learned world determined how they fhould receive 
thefe extraordinary productions, when in 1737 the fame author, 
without any other fupport than his own tranfcendent merit, fixed 
the attention of all Europe, by his Critica Botanica, Genera Plan- 
tarum, Hortus Cliffortianus, Flora Lapponica and Methodus Sexu- 
alis; five works, the produce of one year, each of which would 
alone have been fufficient to have immortalized. its author, and in 
the compofition of which a man's whole life might pres been 
thought ufefully employed ! 
Having by a number of original obfervations, added to thofe of 
forme? writers, demonftrated the fexes of plants, and confequently 
the importance of their ftamina and piftilla; Linnzus founded his 
fexual fyftem on the differences in number, fituation and proportion 
of thefe organs: a fyftem which, although profeffedly merely arzi- 
ficial, is really in many refpeéts more agreeable to nature than many. 
which had preceded it, and which, for facility and univerfality, has a 
decided fuperiority over all hitherto invented. But this was only a 
part of the praife of this rifing genius. Having new modelled and 
fyftematically defined all the known genera of plants, he endeavoured 
in 
