6o HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



vation and closer kaowledge of the whole. The plants were jumbled 

 together, those which were analogous were separated, and the hetero- 

 geneous ones united; no part of them had the special privilege of being, 

 considered as the distinQive mark of its species ; their internal struc- 

 ture had been but little examined, and the use of their names applied 

 without system, appeared so confused and corrupted, that this great 

 resource proved rather a burden than a help to memory. 



The natural pohtics of an ItaUan, first felt after Gksner the incon- 

 venience occasioned by this defeft. This was Andrew CtEsalpinus, 

 born at Arezzo^ in the distri£l: of Florence, in 1519, first professor of 

 physic and botany at the University of Pisa, and afterwards first 

 physician to Pope Clement Vlll. at Rome, where he died 1603. 

 The idea of such a want, being besides a lover of order, which he had 

 learned to yalue in the school of Aristotle, made. him conceive the 

 thought of rendering himself the legislator of the confused botanical 

 commonwealth. This task, however, baffled his strength. His genius- 

 was , inventive, but liis knowledge of botany neither original nor uni- 

 versal. He missed, both leisure and opportunity. Clusius had dis- 

 covered more fresh, plants. than he ever was acquainted with. His her- 

 bal did not contain nine hundred species, a faft. fully proved by the 

 Florentine Botanist: Micheli^ who had. it in his possession,. A- pro- 

 vision of this i kind was too small to give a comprehensive view of bo-" 

 tany, and the knowledge which C^salpinus acquired of the internal 

 strufture of plants, was too secret and too defc£tive to point out the 

 most perfe6l order. He was only direfted by the fruit, and mostly by 

 that part on which the shoots or germins repose. This system had its 

 defers, but, it brought C/esalpinus much nearer to the truth, and he 



■■""/^ .J. 'I.-. discovered 



