SIR HANS SLOANE. 45 



dedicated to the Royal Society and College of 

 Physicians. " This volume/' says Dr Pulteney, 

 " intrinsically valuable as it is, may yet be con- 

 sidered as only the nomenclature or systematic 

 index to his subsequent work. The arrangement 

 of the subject (and which was strictly followed in 

 the History) is nearly that of Mr Ray; vegetables 

 being thrown into twenty-five large natural classes 

 or families. Among botanists of that time, 

 generical characters had not attained any remark- 

 able precision ; and Sloane, like PJukenet, was 

 little farther anxious than to refer his new plants 

 to some genus already established, without a 

 minute attention to the parts of fructification, 

 farther than as they formed part of the character 

 drawn from habit ; yet, with this defect, the 

 figures and descriptions of Sloane proved suffi- 

 ciently accurate to enable his successors to refer 

 almost all his species to the appropriate places in 

 the system of the present day." 



Eleven years after, appeared the first volume 

 of his " Natural History of Jamaica." This is a 

 splendid folio, entitled " A Voyage to the Islands 

 Madeira, Barbados, Nieves, St Christophers, and 

 Jamaica, with the Natural History of the Herbs 

 and Trees, Four-footed beasts, Fishes, Birds, 

 Insects, Reptiles, &c. of the last of these islands, 

 to which is prefixed an Introduction, wherein is 

 an Account of the Inhabitants, Air, Waters, 



