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It is for this reason, that ot all the plants described 

 by Theophrastus and Dioscorides, not a single one 

 can now be satisfactorily identified. Pliny's work is 

 valuable, as collecting all that had been done by the 

 authors before him ; but his descriptions are so 

 vague, taken from such uncertain marks, and from 

 comparison with other plants of which we know 

 nothing, that, as a system of plants, it is perfectly 

 useless. And in this same way. Botany, which has 

 perhaps always been in advance of the other depart- 

 ments of Natural History, went on for fifteen hundred 

 years, till Lobel shadowed out something like a sys- 

 tem of classes, which was afterwards improved upon 

 by the two Bankins. But the first really systematic 

 writer is Ray, whose synopsis was published in 1677, 

 and is, strictly speaking, a systematic work, having 

 an arrangement into classes, genera, and species, — 

 though in this respect still very imperfect. His 

 classes are founded on such indefinite distinctions as 

 trees and shrubs ; his genera are formed upon such 

 characters as the shape of the leaf, color, taste, smell, 

 and even size. His nomenclature is of such a for- 

 midable and repulsive character that none but the 

 most studious and laborious would ever undertake to 

 master it. It seems incredible to a young botanist, 

 accustomed to the concise precision of the present 

 day, which renders his study inviting even to the 

 careless, the indolent, and the fashionable, that a 

 pupil of Ray, when he mentioned a plant, was 

 obliged to repeat, often, a line and half of Latin de- 

 scription, — which, as Miss Kent observes, would 



