LECT. I.] AND PROGRESS OF BOTANY. 7 



wishes ; and are capable of experiencing pleasure 

 and pain. Einpedocles even, to whom, however, 

 is due the merit of having first hinted at the 

 sexes of plants, went so far as to assert that, 

 after a time, plants change to animals, and then 

 the sexual organs, which in the vegetable state 

 are frequently united in one individual, become 

 separated. 



In Greece, for a long period, the knowledge of 

 plants was altogether confined to the Asclepiades or 

 priests of ^Esculapius, who were the physicians of 

 their time: and in the highest plenitude of the 

 taste, elegance, and learning of the Grecian Com* 

 mon wealth ; even in that happy period, when the 

 effulgence of Grecian genius burst forth in all its 

 splendour, and shone till the time of Alexander 

 the Macedonian, Botany had attained but a very 

 limited extent, among the other sciences then cul- 

 tivated. In the works of Theophrastus, who lived 

 about three hundred years before CHRIST, and in- 

 herited the learning of his great masters, PLATO 

 and ARISTOTLE, may be seen all that was known 

 at that time regarding vegetables. His History 

 of Plants, - entitled, Us^l QVTWV la-rogiag *, contains 

 the description of only five hundred species, which 

 were officinal, or used for the cure of diseases. 



<PVT*V iVfyiaf, seu Historic Plantarum, lib. ix. cum 

 Comment. J. C. SCALIGERI et J. BOD.SI a Stapel. Amsterdam, 

 16*4. 



B 4 



