204 Dr. Surrn's Remarks 
led the way to many more. Happy if all had been made with 
equal fagacity, and recorded with equal exactnefs! but every ob- 
ferver was not a Clufius or a Gefner, nor every delineator of plants 
a Fabius Columna. 
The wooden cuts of that day, however wonderful in execution, 
and excellent for defcribing large diftinét plants, in tribes whofe 
forms are flender and delicate, and whofe line of difcrimination is 
fmall, are fcarcely of any ufe, efpecially as they are feldom of the 
fize of nature. | 
The genus of which I am about to treat, is one where figures 
have fucceeded the worft. They have confequently been mif- 
taken and erroneoufly quoted, more efpecially as not half the dif- 
tinct fpecies of Dianthus are figured at all in old authors, though 
their books contain numerous trifling and tranfient varieties of 
D. Caryophyllus, the favourites indeed of florifts, but which a bo- 
tanift would gladly refign for certain information concerning real 
fpecies, important in the œconomy of nature. 
The figures and accounts (for they can fcarcely be called defcrip- 
tions) of thefe plants in the earlier writers being therefore fo con- 
fufed, it is, much to be lamented that fyftematic authors have 
quoted them with fo little care. An erroneous fynonym is worfe 
than none at all. — Linnzus himfelf has been = in this 
refpe&. | 
Having ns wifhed for fome fixed ideas of a genus every day 
before one's eyes, and fome fpecies of which ftand, the opprobrium 
of botanifts, unnamed-in every garden, I have made it my bufi- 
nefs to collect all the fpecimens poffible, and to obferve every 
herbarium that it has been my fortune to vifit in different coun- 
tries; hoping to learn at once to diftinguifh one fpecies from ano- 
: ther, and what authors intended by their different accounts. I 
- had allo in view at the fame time the genus of Arenaria, {till more 
3 intricate 
