BOTANICAL REFOR M. 9; 



celebrated Ehret, which rendered the work dearer than any other 

 ever published by Lin'n.€us. Cli f fort made presents of copies of 

 this work to his friends and principal acquaintance. The few copies 

 which were left to the booksellers, were sold by them at twcnty-thrcc 

 crowns per copy. 



LiNN^us had arranged the plants in this work after his own sys^ei'n. 

 A meritorious undertaking — as, b)' it, more light and greater order were, 

 diffused. The celebrated Swiss botanist Gf.sner*, one of the foreign 

 friends of Linnaeus, gave the following opinion of the Hortus Clijfor- 

 iianus, in alctterto Baron Hai.leh. " An excellent produdion indeed, 



full of ingenious opinions, and as replete with erudition as any bo- 



tanist can possibly display. What pleases me most, is, that the author 

 « — (a thing never done with regularity by any preceding botanist) — 

 « gave besides the names of the species their principal charafteristicst." 



One of the greatest evils in botany, which had thus far rendered 

 that science a maze of difficulties, and threatened it with Babylonian 

 Confusion, was the vague and barbarian technology which prevailed in it. 

 " It resembles a chaos," said Linx.eus, " the mother of which is ig- 

 " norancc, the father custom, and the fosterer prejudice." — Bold enough 

 to hurl into ruins that gothic stru6lure to which several living old 

 artists had contributed, and to exhibit the grounds of his innovations 

 and reforms, he published his Critica Botanica at Leyden, on 228 pages, 



• John Gesker. was born at Zurich, on the iSth of March, 1719, and died on the 6th 

 of May, 1790. 



t Opus sane egregium et acerrimi judicii, ncc niinoris eruditionis, quo difficulter Botanicus 

 carebit; mihi perplacet, ab eo (Linnjeo) in nominibus specierum notas earum essentiales ex- 

 hiberi, quod ante quisquam botaincus r»£te pra:stiterit. See Epist, .id Alb. Hallerum, vol. 

 ii. Bertiis, 1773, p. 6. 



O of 



