12 INTRODUCTION. 



estimable value, as containing a great variety of im- 

 portant facts and observations relative to plants, and 

 exhibiting a summary view of the whole mass of 

 botanical and phytological knowledge as it stood at 

 the time ; and even setting before us an example of 

 phytological experiment that was not to have been 

 looked for at that early period. 



Decline of But unhappily the example of Theophrastus had 

 L ^Greece, not the effect of alluring to the study of plants his 

 successors in the peripatetic school, nor of diffusing 

 the love of phytological inquiry among the other 

 schools of Greece. If any thing was written on the 

 subject it is now totally lost ; and we can judge of 

 the progress of botany only by inference, from which 

 it appears not indeed to have been wholly neglected, 

 but rather to have made some advancement, coun- 

 tenanced as it then was by the patronage of the 

 great ; if the etymology of some names does not 

 mislead us. The plants Lysimachia and Eupato- 

 rium are said to have obtained their names respec- 

 A. C. tively from Lysirnachus a king of Sicily, and the 

 brave but unfortunate Mithridates, king of Pontus, 

 who are both represented as having been encoura- 

 gers of botanical investigation. 



And of Still it is evident that the study of plants began 

 with ns to decline among the Greeks along with the de- 

 tkwtoo cline of empire, and to emigrate with the other 

 Ita] y- arts and sciences into Italy;* where it appears to 



* Graecia capta ferum victorcm cepit, et artes 

 Intulit agrcsti Latio. Hor. Epist. I lib. ii, 



5 



