OP BOTANICAL SCIENCE. 



3 



tion as the night of barbarism descended, and for 

 a long time the remains even of Greek and 

 Roman learning were entirely hid. The Ara- 

 bians, indeed, after they had instituted schools 

 of learning, infirmaries, and laboratories, applied 

 themselves diligently to the study of medicinal 

 plants ; but they drew their knowledge entirely 

 from Dioscorides. 



The flourishing trade which this nation carried 

 on for some centuries, from Madeira to China, 

 made them acquainted with many remarkable 

 oriental plants which had escaped the notice 

 of the Greeks. There were also, in the western 

 parts of the Arabian empire, some inquisitive 

 students of imture, who endeavoured to correct 

 and extend their knowledge by travel. About 

 the beginning of the eleventh century, the Ara- 

 bians became the teachers of the other nations of 

 western Christendom, who now formed their 

 schools of learning according to the Mahommedan 

 pattern, and translated their books from the 

 Arabians. In this manner, a slight knowledge 

 of botany was slowly disseminated throughout 

 the most enlightened parts of Europe. 



At the revival of learning in the fifteenth cen- 

 tury, the botanical knowledge of the ancients 

 began to be available in the language of the 

 original treatises ; and, in the following century, 

 the Germans commenced original inquiries into 

 the science, and first began to illustrate their 

 treatises, by wood engi-avings of the different 

 plants. The first work of this kind was wi-itten 

 by Otto Brunfels, a native of Strasburgh. To 

 this succeeded, about the middle of the sixteenth 

 centtiry, the work of Gesner, a professor of 

 Zmich, in which the first attempts are made at 

 a classification and systematic arrangement of 

 plants, founded chiefly on the characters of their 

 flowers. The taste for Botany, now excited, be- 

 gan to spread throughout the chief states of 

 FJurope. Kings and nobles engaged in the study, 

 and gardens were established for the cultivation 

 of the most rare and useful productions of the 

 soU. We are principally indebted to the esta- 

 blishment of learned societies, in the seventeenth 

 century, and to the invention of the microscope, 

 for the first attempts at a more minute examina- 

 tion of the structure of plants. In the Royal 

 Society of London for the promotion of science, 

 which was liberally supported by Charles II. 

 several philosophers occupied themselves with 

 the dissection and microscopical examination of 

 plants. Of these, the most distinguished was 

 Nehemiah Grew, secretary to the society. His 

 discoveries are recorded in his elaborate work 

 the Anatomy of Plants illustrated by numerous 

 engravings. In this work we find the first no- 

 tice of the twofold sex of plants, which doctrine 

 he had learned from Thomas Millington, a pro- 

 fessor in Oxford. Malpighi and Leuwenhoeck 

 also distinguished themselves as investigators of 



the minute structure of plants ; and, the same 

 subject was ardently pursued by several members 

 of the French Academy of Sciences, founded in 

 1665. The doctrine of the sex of plants, which 

 had been obscurely hinted at by Grew, was ex- 

 perimentally illustrated by Bobart, and fully es- 

 tablished by Ray. 



But vsith this increasing knowledge of the nature 

 of plants, and the rapid multiplication of known 

 species, no method of arrangement had yet been 

 adopted calculated for general use, and especially 

 for the guidance of the practical student. In 

 this crisis of botanical perplexity, when speci- 

 mens were every day multiplying in the hands 

 of collectors, and the science was in danger of 

 relapsing again into an absolute chaos, a great 

 and elevated genius arose, destined to restore 

 order; who, surveying the immense mass of 

 materials, with a sagacity and penetration un- 

 paralleled in botanical research, and seizing, as 

 if by intuition, the grand traits of character cal- 

 culated to form the elements of a philosophical 

 division, detected the clew by which he was 

 to extricate himself from the intricacies of the 

 labyrinth, and rear the superstructure of a new 

 method. This great and illustrious naturalist 

 was the celebrated Linnaeus. He was bom at 

 Roshult, in Sweden, in 1707, and performed in 

 1732 his memorable journey through Lapland. 

 He afterwards travelled into Holland, became 

 superintendent of the Clifford gardens, and pub- 

 lished his System of Nature at Leyden in 1735, 

 and the Genera Plantarum in 1737. In 1741, he 

 was appointed a professor of the University of 

 Upsal, and continued for many years the suc- 

 cessful cultivator and illustrator of his favourite 

 studies. He has the merit of having first regu- 

 lated, and defined the artificial language of bo- 

 tany. He fixed the laws of classification, and 

 divided the vegetable kingdom into classes, 

 families, and species ; invented scientific, and 

 common, or trivial names, and enriched the 

 science by many thousand new and hitherto un- 

 described plants. But, above all, he invented 

 what is denominated the artificial mode of ar- 

 rangement, by taking the parts of inflorescence, 

 as the flower or corolla, and stamens, and pistils, 

 or distinctive sexual organs, as the basis of his 

 system. Since the death of Linnseus, the chief 

 labours of botanists have been employed in per- 

 fecting his system, in applying it to the lowest 

 families of plants, in the more careful examina- 

 tion of fruits and seeds ; and, in short, rendering 

 it a convenient alphabet, by which the student 

 of botany may be enabled to know and recog- 

 nize the families and species of plants. A more 

 philosophical view of the vegetable kingdom, 

 based on the natural affinities of plants, has 

 also been sedulously pursued by Jussieu, Decan- 

 doUe, and many other eminent botanists. 



