473 



confined and local use ; the alphabetical index having 

 become the resource of even the most learned ; and the 

 pupils of Ray being held to his method of classification, 

 rathe 'by their gratitude for his practical instruction, than 

 any other consideration. Accordingly we have, in our 

 own early progress, before they were all, as at present, 

 swept off the stage, found them rather contending for his 

 nomenclature, imperfect as it was, because they were ha- 

 bituated to it, than for his system, of which, it was evi- 

 dei t, they had made little use. Hence the first attempt 

 in England to reduce our plants to Linnsean order, made 

 by Hill, was chiefly a transposition of Ray's Synopsis into 

 the Linnsean classes, the original nomenclature being re- 

 tained, while the specific names of the Species Plantarum 

 were rejected. 



Hill's imperfect performance was superseded by the 

 more classical Flora Anglica of Hudson, composed under 

 the auspices and advice of the learned and ingenious Stil- 

 lingfleet, in which the botany of England assumed a most 

 scientific aspect, and with which all the knowledge of 

 Ray was incorporated. At the same time, the principles 

 of theoretical botany, and the philosophical writings of 

 the learned Swede, were studied with no ordinary powers 

 of discrimination and judgement, in a small circle of ex- 

 perienced observers at Norwich. A love of flowers, and 

 a great degree of skill in their cultivation, had been long 

 ago imported into that ancient commercial city, with its 

 worsted manufacture, from Flanders ; and out of this 

 taste, something like the study of systematic botany had 

 sprung. These pursuits were mostly confined to the 

 humblest of the community, particularly among the then 

 very numerous bodies of journeymen weavers, dyers, &c. 

 Towards the middle of the eighteenth century, several of 

 the opulent merchants seem to have acquired, by their 

 intimate connexion with Holland, not only the above- 

 mentioned taste for horticulture, but likewise an ambition 



