312 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



treating without order upon the medicinal qualities of plants ; 

 and Pliny copied these notes without comment or criticism. 

 We cannot apply to the plants of Germany or France, the 

 names under which the ancients described those of Italy, 

 Greece, and Asia : before studying the plants of foreign coun. 

 tries, we ought to know those of our own. Of what use are 

 disputes about the nature and qualities of species, when we are 

 not able to distinguish one from another. The true method of 

 doing this is to explore the plains, valleys and mountains, to 

 examine and compare the plants of our own and foreign coun- 

 tries. Libraries alone are insufficient to make botanists." 



These reflections led to a happy revolution, not only in this 

 science, but in all others ; it may be called the era of true 

 philosophy.* Yet the principles, which were now discovered, 

 were not much applied to science until the time of Bacon, 

 Newton, Linnoeus and Locke ; and it remained for the late 

 Thomas Brown, of Edinburgh, to show that the human mind 

 itself, is subject to the same general laws of inquiry which now 

 regulate investigations in the physical sciences. 



Up to the period of which we are now speaking, plants had 

 only been described in alphabetical order; about this time 

 some German botanists attempted a collection of individual 

 plants into species ; this improvement was received with much 

 approbation. 



These species were arranged according to certain general 

 resemblances, or natural relations ; thus we see that natural 

 methods were prior to any attempts at an artificial system. 



In the beginning of the 16th century, we find the names 

 of many who were engaged in investigating the vegetable king, 

 dom. Some are commemorated by the names of plants; 

 Leonard Fusch of Germany, by the plant Fuschsia ; Lobel, 

 physician to James I. by the Lobelia ; and Lonicer by the 

 Lonicera. 



Lobel distinguished the cotyledons of seeds, and divided 

 monocotyledonous, from dicotyledonous plants, and attempted 

 to form families by grouping species according to their natural 



* Lord Bacon is generally considered as having first taught the proper meth- 

 od of studying the sciences, viz : by ascending from facts to principles ; this is 

 called the method of induction. It has recently been asserted by an able 

 writer in one of our first American periodicals, that Bacon was not the author 

 of the inductive philosophy, but that he borrowed his rules of philosophizing 

 from Aristotle, whose real principles had for ages been misunderstood. It is to 

 be hoped that men of talents will not so far depart from the true rules of philo- 

 sophizing, as to devote that time in contending about their author, which might 

 be profitably applied in the application of these rules to the investigation of 

 truth and nature. 



Era of true philosophy Improvements of German botanists Botanists of 

 the 16th century. 



