MEMOIRS OF THE 



promising talents, he was sent to England in the 

 year 1715, to be under the immediate protection of 

 the Earl of Ila, who continued his education, and 

 gave him the free use of his library. He had an 

 early love for plants, and studied Botany at a pe- 

 riod when few persons in England had any know- 

 ledge of the science. In his time a meteor appeared 

 in the North, which was the great LINNAEUS, who 

 was born in the year 1707. As the foundation of 

 the reputation of Lee depended upon the Reform that 

 this transcendent genius wrought in Botany, and 

 since his " Introduction to Botany" as he expresses 

 in the title-page, is but a transcript of the mind of 

 that most distinguished naturalist, it may not be im- 

 proper in a work like the present, to say a few words 

 respecting the progress of the Science of Botany. 

 Previous to the time of Linn/eus,. Nehemiah 

 Grew, an Englishman, flourished a very eminent 

 physiologist, who consulted not books, but Nature, 

 and wrote his " Vegetable Anatomy " in 1682. In 

 this work he mentions the Sexes of Plants, relating 

 a conversation he held on the subject, with Sir Tho- 

 mas Milling ton, Savilian v Professor of Natural 

 History at Oxford, and President of the Royal Lon- 

 don College of Physicians. Sebastian Vaillant 

 also wrote " a Discourse on the Structure of Flowers" 

 confirming the doctrine of the Sexes of Plants, which 

 Linnaeus acknowledges to have read, and which 

 might have laid the foundation of his building up a 



