Sect. II.] Botany. 163 



Kalm, Schoepf, Buffon, and several others, deserve 

 to be mentioned with honour. 



SECTION II. 



BOTANY. 



In this branch of natural history tlie succession 

 of discoveries and improvements, which the period 

 before us has displayed, is in the highest degree 

 honourable to modern science. At the opening 

 of the eighteenth century. Botanical Philosophy, 

 though it had been long cultivated, was still in a 

 very confused and imperfect state. Numerous had 

 been the attempts to arrange the vegetable tril)cs 

 into an intelligible system, but great disorder and 

 deficiency appeared in every plan. Among these 

 attempts the most respectable and successful were 

 those of Ray and Rivinus. The former, an English 

 clergyman, before mentioned, had proposed his 

 method to the world in 1682; but afterwards pre- 

 sented it in a new and improved form in 1703. He 

 arranged all known vegetables under thirty-three 

 classes, deriving the distinguishing character of each 

 chiefly from the fruit. His system, though un- 

 doubtedly much superior to any which had been 

 devised by his predecessors, was still very defective; 

 and the characters of his plants were so many and 



172B. His anatomical histories of the Bearer, Musk-rat and Por-^ 

 cupine, are vahiable. M. Sarragin hkewise distinguished himsch 

 by a publication on the Sugar Maple (Acer Snccharinum) of that 

 country. The remarkable family of plants denominated Sarace- 

 nia was so named in honour of this writer, by tlie illustrious 

 Tournefort. 



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