156 Systematic Botany. 



Their minds were excited by the hope of undiscovered forms, 

 enabling them to fill up chasms which, they could not fail to 

 perceive, existed in the most perfect methods known to them; 

 and the strenuous investigations instituted on this account, 

 naturally brought them acquainted with an abundance of 

 subjects, the existence of which the imperfection of their 

 previous knowledge could not have led them to suspect. 

 Thus we perceive, that during the space of more than 5,500 

 years, from the creation of the world, to the time of Caesal- 

 pinus, a period during the greater part of which botany was 

 an humble art, necessarily, from its intimate connection with 

 the wants of mankind, the study of physicians, the whole 

 number of recorded plants of all descriptions scarcely 

 equalled the quantity now produced, under the auspices of 

 science, by the investigations of a twelvemonth. This will 

 be placed in a stronger point of view, by a glance at the 

 history of botany up to the appearance of the work which 

 stands at the head of this article. 



In the early ages of the world, the science which is now called 

 botany, consisted of a collection of names, and exceedingly im- 

 perfect descriptions of plants, either entirely unarranged, or 

 combined according to their supposed qualities in medicine, 

 or in human economy. The first race of botanists were, there- 

 fore, physicians, or mere simplers, who cared for no classification 

 beyond that which enabled them to arrive at a knowledge of 

 the powers and effects of the few herbs which were imported 

 for pharmacy, or which grew in their vicinity. Even after 

 the revival of learning in Europe, the same ideas were enter- 

 tained, and a proportionate progress was made in the acqui- 

 sition of knowledge. The second race of botanists, or those 

 who existed after the dark ages of Europe had passed away, 

 were the commentators upon the writings of the first race ; 

 men of some learning, indeed, but in the deepest ignorance of 

 the subject they undertook to illustrate; — monks, whose prac- 

 tical knowledge extended not beyond the walls of their mo- 

 nastery, and who depended for all the information they found 

 necessary to their purposes upon the assistance they could 

 derive from the few copies of the Arabian physicians which 

 their own or their monastic libraries might chance to possess. 

 Science, in the hands of such men, would, it may be easily 

 believed, retrograde rather than make advances towards im- 

 provement. So that up to the time of Vincentius Bel- 

 lovacensis, who has been called the Pliny of the middle ages, 

 and whose Speculum Quadripartitum was published in 1494, 

 the second volume of which is devoted to the subject of Natural 

 History, it may be safely affirmed that no progress whatever in 



