[ 49 3 



SECTION IV. 



A SHORT HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



AMONG THE GREEKS.— THEOPHRASTUS, THE FATHER OF BOTANY. — HIPT'O- 

 CRATES.— DIOSCORIDES.— AMONG THE ROMANS.— PLINY.— VIEW OF THE PRO- 

 GRESS OF BOTANY.— OBSTACLES.— WANT OF SYSTEMATICAL DIVISION.— FATE OF 

 THIS SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGE.— ITS REG£N£RATION IN THE FIFTEENTH 

 CENTURY BY THE GERMANS — BRUNFELS. — BOCK.— FUCHS.' — THE SIXTEENTH 

 CENTURY.— CONRAD GESNER, THE FATHER OF MODERN BOTANICAL HISIORY. 

 —HIS SINGULAR DESTINY.— CULTIVATION OF BOTANICAL GARDENS.— BOTANI- 

 CAL EXCURSIONS.— THE GERMANS ARE THE FIRST WHO PUBLISHED THE FLORAS, 

 OR COLLECTIONS OF PLANTS OF CERTAIN COUNTRIES.— CLUSIUS THE GREAT- 

 EST BOTANICAL TRAVELLER IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.— AFfLUENCE OF 

 BOTANICAL MATERIALS.— WANT OF A NEW SYSTEM.— CAESALPINUS, AN ITA- 

 LIAN, FORMS ONE.— CASPAR BAUHIN, A SWISS, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL WRITER 

 ON BOTANY.— THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.— JUNGIUS.— MANY JOURNIES TO 

 PROMOTE NATURAL HISTORY.— MORISON AND RAY, ENGLISHMEN, THE FIRST 

 AUTHORS OF MODERN SYSTEMS.— RIVINI S.—TOURNEFORT, THE MODERN LE- 

 GISLATOR I.V BOTANY.— ACCOUNTS RESPECTING HIM AND HIS SYSTEM.— 

 VAILLANT HIS PUPIL.— HIS INGENIOUS OBSERVATIONS ON THE GENERA, OR 

 SEXES, OF PLANTS. 



1 HAT same region of Eastern Europe, whence the Muses by ferocity 

 and warlike rage were driven, towards the middle of the fifteenth cen- 

 tury, to seek an asylum in other districts of this part of the globe, and 

 which has been the seat of Ottoman ignorance and barbarism ever 

 since ; that same region which, in the time of the Greeks, became the 

 genuine soil of all the sciences, was also the cradle of botany. It 

 owes its first cultivation to Theophrastus, that eminent philosopher 



H who 



