FORMATION OF SYSTEMS. 327 



Botanici, was printed at Basil in 1623. It was a 

 useful undertaking at the time ; but the want of 

 any genuine order in the Pinax itself, rendered^ it 

 impossible that it should be of great permanent 

 utility. 



After this period, the progress of almost all the 

 sciences became languid for a while; and one reason 

 of this interruption was, the wars and troubles which 

 prevailed over almost the whole of Europe. The 

 quarrels of Charles the First and his parliament, the 

 civil wars and the usurpation, in England; in France, 

 the war of the league, the stormy reign of Henry 

 the Fourth, the civil wars of the minority of Louis 

 the Thirteenth, the war against the Protestants and 

 the war of the Fronde, in the minority of Louis the 

 Fourteenth; the bloody and destructive Thirty 

 Years' War in Germany ; the war of Spain with the 

 United Provinces and with Portugal; all these dire 

 agitations left men neither leisure nor disposition 

 to direct their best thoughts to the promotion of 

 science. The baser spirits were brutalized; the 

 better were occupied by high practical aims and 

 struggles of their moral nature. Amid such storms, 

 the intellectual powers of man could not work with 

 their due calmness, nor his intellectual objects 

 shine with their proper lustre. 



At length a period of greater tranquillity gleamed 

 forth, and the sciences soon expanded in the sun- 

 shine. Botany was not inert amid this activity, and 

 rapidly advanced in a new direction, that of physio- 



