HISTORY OF BOTANY. 53 



all the plants growing on our globe is certainly unlimited, and can only 

 be alledgedupon supposition and conjefclure. Linnteus counted after- 

 wards 10,000 species of them, and described upwards of 8.000. One 

 of his subsequent adversaries, the French botanist, Adanson, who 

 made several discoveries in his African travels, estimated the number 

 of those plants which were known, but not properly discriminated, at 

 18,000, and that of the unknown ones at 25,000. If we admit this 

 calculation, which bears every plausibility of being too high in number 

 according to Adanson, and too low according to the Linn^ean 

 scale, only choose a medium between both extremes, the result arising 

 from it will furnish a decisive proof of the scanty provision which the 

 ancients have made for this division of the store-house of natural know- 

 ledge. They described the plants, but required longer and more va- 

 rious observations to represent their internal strufture, properties, and 

 distinftive" marks. In other respefis they formed their collections 

 without order, without any panicular classification j a circum- 

 stance which proved extremely painful and laborious to the sub- 

 sequent lovers of botany. The small quantity of materials amassed 

 by the ancients, remained "a rough chaos, v/hich waited to receive 

 its more diretl limitation and arrangement from some creative 

 hand. There v/as no branch in which such a chaos could be more de- 

 trimental than in the history of Nature, the mother of so many nume- 

 rous families, races and offsprings, among which a limited distinftion 

 and classification could alone elucidate the original descents, and their 

 various branches and affinities. 



In a state thus debile and infirm, botany was handed dowm to a bar- 

 barous and superstitious eera, in which the cultivation of the sciences 



was 



