224 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



by turns the asylum and tomb of letters, had witnessed under the 

 first of the Cesars the destruction of the library collected by the 

 Ptolemies ; under AureUan, that founded by Augustus ; under The- 

 odosius, that which Antony had given to Cleopatra ; and for the 

 fourth time in possession of an immense collection of books, ac- 

 quired through her love for philosophy, this city saw her magnifi- 

 cent library reduced to ashes by the victorious Saracens. 



This barbarous but noble race at length became imbued with the 

 love of science ; a succession of califs, (among whom was Ha- 

 roun Alraschid, already spoken of as the friend ofCharlemagne,) by 

 their devotion to learning, rendered Bagdad the most enlightened 

 city of the earth. Their learned men began to construct maps of 

 conquered countries, and to describe objects of natural history j 

 distant voyages extended and multiplied their commercial relations ;. 

 and mathematics, medicine, and natural history, were cultivated 

 with ardour. 



When the Arabs had conquered Spain, they carried thither letters 

 and arts, and their schoo^' became celebrated throughout the world. 

 In the 11th century the French, Italians, Germans, and English, 

 went to them to learn the elements of science. The Arabians pre- 

 served their superiority m the sciences at least, if not in literature, 

 until towards the close of the 15th century. But when this people, 

 divested gradually of their European conquests, were at last driven 

 from Spain into Africa, they seemed, as if by instinct, to replunge 

 into the savage ignorance from whence they had been drawn by the 

 eftbrts of a few great minds. 



The Arabs had considered plants more as physicians and agricul- 

 turists, than as botanists ; but although their descriptions of plants 

 were imperfect, their labours were not useless to botanical science. 

 They discovered many plants of Persia, India, and China, which 

 were unknown to the ancients. They, however, fell into the error 

 of dweUing more upon the works of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Dios- 

 corides, and Pliny, than of observing nature; almost believing that 

 nature herself must be wrong, when she deviated from those celC' 

 brated philosophers. 



The Crusades, commencing at the close of the 11th century, and 

 continuing until towards the middle of the 13th, prove the barbarity 

 of the times ; yet we cannot doubt that these distant and romantic 

 expeditions were, in part, suggested by the desire of change and the 

 vague wish to see and to know new things, and hastened the awak- 

 ening of the human mind from the sleep of ages. 



The 12th and 13th centuries witnessed in Italy the revival of a 

 taste for letters and the fine arts. The commerce of that country 

 was flourishing, the people made long voyages by sea, and in the 

 accounts which they published, spoke of the vegetable productions 

 of the countries they had visited, in such a manner as excited the 

 curiosity of the nations of Europe. 



About this period, it is supposed, herbariums, or collections of 

 dried plants, began to be preserved. This was an important era in 

 botanical science; for nature is ever true and incapable of leading 

 into error, while descriptions, or even drawings, may often give false 

 views of natural objects. 



The science of Botany was not enriched by a single work of any 

 merit, from the fall of the Roman empire, a perioci which marked 



Destruction of the Alexandrian Library— Bagdad famous for learning— Schools of 

 Arabs in Spain— Remarks upon the Arabian botanists — TheCrusades— Revival of lit- 

 erature — Herbariums made. 



