UNSYSTEMATIC KNOWLEDGE. 303 



names of plants, and gives their medicinal effect 

 after his predecessors :" so little true is it, that the 

 use of the senses alone necessarily leads to real 

 knowledge. 



Though the growing activity of thought in 

 Europe, and the revived acquaintance with the 

 authors of Greece in their genuine form, were gra- 

 dually dispelling the intellectual clouds of the mid- 

 dle ages, yet during the fifteenth century, botany 

 makes no approach to a scientific form. The greater 

 part of the literature of this subject consisted of 

 Herbals, all of which were formed on the same plan, 

 and appeared under titles such as ffortus, or Ortus 

 Sanitatis. There are, for example, three 24 such 

 German Herbals, with wood-cuts, which date about 

 1490. But an important peculiarity in these works 

 is, that they contain some indigenous species placed 

 side by side with the old ones. In 1516, The Grete 

 Herbal was published in England, also with wood- 

 cuts. It contains an account of more than four 

 hundred vegetables, and their products ; of which 

 one hundred and fifty are English, and are no way 

 distinguished from the exotics by the mode in which 

 they are inserted in the work. 



We shall see, in the next Chapter, that when the 

 intellect of Europe began really to apply itself to the 

 observation of nature, the progress towards genuine 

 science soon began to be visible, in this as in other 

 subjects; but before this tendency could operate 

 84 Augsburg, 1488. Mainz, 1491. Lubeck, 1492. 



