34^ BOTANICAL OBSERVATIONS 



" bles ; and that he wrote all their answers in hi* 

 " note-book -, that he was infinitely delighted with 

 M the candid, modest, amicable, and respectful de- 

 U bates of those pagan philosophers, each of whom 

 " adduced passages from ancient books in support 

 " of his own opinion, but without any bitterness of 

 " contest or the least perturbation of mind ; that the 

 " texts which they cited, were in verse, and takea 

 <i from books, as they positively asserted, more than 

 <f four thousand years old: that the first couplet of 

 «' each section in those books comprised the synony- 

 <c mous terms for the plant, which was the subject 

 " of it j and that, in the subsequent verses, there 

 *< was an ample account of its kind or species, its 

 " properties, accidents, qualities, figure, parts, 

 " place of growth, time of flowering and bearing 

 " fruit, medical virtues, and more general uses ; 

 that they quoted those texts by memory, having 

 gotten them by heart in their earliest youth, ra-. 

 u ther as a play than a study, according to the im- 

 K< memorial usage of such Indian tribes as are des- 

 €C tined by law to the learned professions ; and on 

 " that singular law of tribes, peculiar to the old 

 •* Egyptians and Indians, he adds many solid and 

 " pertinent remarks." Now when we complain, 

 and myself as, much as any, that we have no leisure 

 in India for literary and philosophical pursuits, wc 

 should consider that Van Rheede was a nobleman, 

 at the head of an Indian government, in his time 

 very considerable, and that he fully discharged all 

 the duties of his important station, while he found 



leisure 





