Use'of Sait in Horticuiture, 53 



proved by cultivation, and whose vineyards had always been 

 much less productive, propagated a story that he had procured 

 such unusual crops by the arts of magic and sorcery*. 



It likevrise appears from a variety of testimony, that the 

 ancients were equally ignorant-of the methods of rearing shrubs, 

 herbs, and plants. Such of these as were cultivated, were pre- 

 served merely for the purposes of medicine ; and though the 

 medical professors had this stimulus, their knowledge of va- 

 rieties seems to have been very limited. Theophrastus, a writer 

 of great credit, who carefully collected plants as well as minerals, 

 and who collected not only those of Greece, but travelled in 

 Egypt, Ethiopia, and Arabia, for the improvement of science, 

 was able to obtain only 600 species. M. Rollin, however, 

 tells us, that when, by order of Pope Nicholas V. in the 

 middle of the 15th century, a translation of the work of Theo- 

 phrastus was printed, the physicians of that day, perhaps the 

 only class of men who attended to the orders of plants, were so 

 dissatisfied with the narrow limits of botanical knowledge, that 

 resolutions were taken to go in quest of it to the very places 

 whence Theophrastus and others of the ancients had written. 

 He adds, that in consequence of these decisions, voyages were 

 made to the islands of the Archipelago, to Palestine, to Arabia, 

 and^ Egypt; and these expeditions were attended with so 

 much success, that in the beginning of the 16th century, the 

 learned were in possession of the description, not of 600 only, 

 but of more than 6,000 plants, with engraved figures of eachf. 



It seems, however, that Botany did not obtain much of the 

 appearance of a science until the beginning of the last century, 

 when Louis XIV. with the munificence becoming a great prince, 

 commissioned Mons. Tournefort to make a botaniqal excur- 

 sion through many of the provinces of Asia and Africa, to 

 collect plants, and to make observations upon natural his- 

 tory in general. This great man received the king's order in 

 the year 1700, and although he was driven home in 1702, by 

 the fear of the plague which then raged in Egypt, he brought 



• IHiny, lib. xiv. c. 3. 

 t Rollin's History of the AH$ and Sciences *fUie AnciailSy vol. iii. 



