4 BOTANIC QARDENS. 



Before this, liowever, a still more important development in 

 the method of study of plants had ensued, as is shown distinctly 

 in the botanical writings of the latter half of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury. The all-important fact of the natural affinities of plants 



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had gradually assumed distinctness — an idea not within the 

 grasp of any one of the herbalists of the time, whose accumulat- 

 ing and repeated descriptions of individual species gave rise to 



