52 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



about 2500 different authors. This, in some measure, proves that the 

 Romans were not without naturalists, though their fame had perished 

 with their wor-k.^. Pliny was too soon wrested from the lap of the 

 science which he cukivated with so much zeal and success, for he fell 

 a victim to his curiosity on Mount Vesuvius, in the 56th year of his. 

 age, and the 79th after the birth of Christ. 



These were the most eminent and most celebrated botanists of anti- 

 quity. The pains they took, the colleSions and discoveries by which 

 they first opened the career of this science, however meritorious, could 

 not but be considered as the efforts of beginners. No study was less- 

 susceptible of being brought by them to a certain criterion of perfec- 

 tion than that of botany and natural history in general. Romew&s not 

 built in a day; nor could the edifice of this science be raised in so. 

 sudden a manner. It required materials from all countries on earth,, 

 w-hich demanded to be minutely viewed, examined, and arranged. The 

 Romans were the masters of the ancient M'orld; but they had only a. 

 slight and superficial knowledge of the smallest part of it ; in propor- 

 tion to the Greeks they had but few connexions with foreigners; every 

 body was uncultivated but themselves ; the art of printing, and that of. 

 engraving on copper and wood, had not yet been invented;- — all these 

 were material obstacles to a successful and marked progress in natural 

 history. 



The plants which were known and discovered by the ancients, though, 

 they amounted to fome thousands, were still but very few, and an 

 almost imperceptible part of an infinite whole. They solely consisted 

 of the plain coUeftions of southern produce, mostly gathered on the 

 frontiers of two parts of the world, Eurojje and Asia. The number of 



all 



