HISTORY OF BOTANY. 309 



scribe objects of natural history ; distant voyages extended 

 and multiplied their commercial relations ; and mathematics, 

 medicine, and natural history, were cultivated with ardour. 



When the Arabs had conquered Spain, they carried thither 

 letters and arts, and their schools became celebrated through- 

 out the world. In the llth century the French, Italians, Ger- 

 mans and English, went to them to learn the elements of sci- 

 ence. The Arabians preserved their superiority in the scien- 

 ces, at least, if not in literature, until towards the close of the 

 15th century. But when this people, divested gradually of 

 their European conquests, were at last driven from Spain into 

 Africa, they seemed, as if by instinct, to replunge into the sav- 

 age ignorance from which they had been drawn by the efforts 

 of a few great minds. 



The Arabs had considered plants more as physicians and 

 agriculturists, than as botanists ; but although their descriptions 

 of plants were imperfect, their labours were not useless to 

 botanical science. They discovered many plants of Persia, 

 India, and China, which were unknown to the ancients. They, 

 however, fell into the error of dwelling more upon the works 

 of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny, than of ob- 

 serving nature : almost believing nature herself must be wrong, 

 when she deviated from those celebrated philosophers. 



The Crusades, commencing at the close of the 1 1th century, 

 and continuing until towards the middle of the 13th, prove the 

 barbarity of the times ; yet we cannot doubt that these distant 

 and romantic expeditions were suggested by the desire of 

 change, and the vague wish to see and to know new things ; 

 and hastened the awakening of the human mind from its long 

 sleep of ages. 



The 12th and 13th centuries, witnessed in Italy the revival 

 of a taste for letters and the fine arts. The commerce of that 

 country was flourishing, the people made long voyages by sea, 

 and in the relations which they published, spoke of the vegeta- 

 ble productions of the countries they had visited, in such a man- 

 ner as excited the curiosity of the nations of Europe. 



About this period, it is supposed, herbariums, or collections 

 of dried plants, began to be prepared. This was an important 

 era in botanical science ; for nature is ever true, and incapa- 

 ble of leading into error, while descriptions, or even drawings, 

 may often give false views of natural objects. 



The science of botany, was not enriched by a single work of 

 any merit, from the fall of the Roman Empire, a period which 

 marked the decay of literature, until the 1 5th century. Those, 



Schools of Arabs in Spain Their labours of some use to botanical science- 

 Crusades Revival of literature Herbariums composed. 



