Kciv Puhlkat'ions, 173 



before prefented to the world. They are written In a ftyle 

 eminently correft, manly, and elegant. If fubfequent geo- 

 logifts (hall continue to improve their fcience as Mr. Kirwan 

 has here done, the world may, perhaps, atfomediftant future 

 lime, fee a fauhlefs theory of the earth. 



Phytologla ; or an EJfay on the Principles of Vegetation^ ^c. 

 By Erasmus Darwin, M. D. 4/0, Johnfon, Saint 

 Paul's Church- Yard. 



The Botanic Garden and Zoonomia, by Dr. Darwin, are 

 two noble monuments of fancy, induftry, and fcience. In 

 one we have almoft the firft inftance of the happy application} 

 of poetry to illuftrate and embellifh the phyfical branches of 

 philofophy. The other is, to fay the leaft of it, a vaft col- 

 lection of the moft curiouHy intcrefting fafts, phyfiological 

 and pathognomical, in the hiftory of human life, as well as 

 of many of the moft ingenioufly conceived theories which 

 have been propofed to combine thofe fafts into fyftenis, the 

 foundations of praftical ruk-s. 



In his Phytologia, the fame author, with a flow of fancy 

 and fentiment nearly fimilar to that in his former works, in 

 the fame ornate, yet clear, cafy, and natural ftyle, in the 

 fame charaiieriftic method of aflembling faCls, deducing 

 inferences, and fuggefting analogies, applies himfelf to ex- 

 plain the phyfiology of vegetables, to trace the chemical re- 

 lations between vegetating bodies and the furrounding fub- 

 ftances from which they are nouriftied, and 'then to deduce 

 a fyftem of rules for the improvement of the art of the gar- 

 dener and the praftix-e of the huflbandman. 



The readers of the Botanic Garden may perhaps have fup- 

 pofed, that in the tale of the Loves of the Plants the author 

 intended only to dignify and animate his account of the 

 theory of Linnaeus by a happy and beautiful poetic fiAion. 

 But they have miftaken his purpofe, and his botanical creed, 

 who have thus conceived of them. He was never in his 

 life more in earneft, than inafcribing to vegetables ihc fenfa- 

 Ifons, the affeftions, the pafiions, aiid even the defigns of 

 which we, ordinary mortals, believe animals alone to be 

 l-apablc. In faft, it is one of his favourite opinions, that 



plant? 



