1 6 INTRODUCTION. 



pient emanations in France Delachamp and the 

 elder of the Bauhins, embracing in one comprehen- 

 sive view the whole of the vegetable kingdom and 

 in our own country Turner and Gerarde, whose 

 herbals are monuments, at least, of their great and 

 indefatigable industry and love of botanical research. 

 Such were the happy effects resulting to the study 

 of botany, from the new impulse communicated to 

 the energies of the human mind in the revival of 

 letters. 

 Of metho- But in the works of all botanists there was still 



tlical ar- 



range- one capital defect, that rendered the study of plants 

 extremely perplexed and uninviting. Their figures 

 and descriptions were wholly without method ; so 

 that the mind was yet occupied merely about indi- 

 viduals without having attended sufficiently to those 

 features of vegetable character by which its ideas 

 might have been generalized, and its labours 

 abridged. The inconvenience resulting from this 

 defect began now, however, to be severely felt, and 

 the necessity of method to be plainly perceived. It 

 was an object worthy of the labours of the learned 

 to ascertain and establish the principles of scientific 

 arrangement, and accordingly the first hints on the 



ByGesner. subject were suggested by Conrad Gesner, a native 

 of Zurich in Switzerland, and th# greatest naturalist 

 that had appeared since the time of Aristotle ; who 

 borrowing the idea perhaps from Aristotle's zoologi- 

 cal arrangements, suggested the method of arrang- 

 ing plants into classes, orders, and genera, accord- 



