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REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES 



"LiNN,€.us, shall be really new." To be the more accurate, he 

 mentioned only those plants which he had seen in herbals or gardens 

 on his different tours in Sweden, Holland, England, and France, or which 

 had been sent to him by his pupils. The rest he examinexi particularly, 

 and as his work was wholly botanical, he forbore to add their sanative 

 virtues, confining himself to mention their native countries, their syno- 

 nims, their purity, He also gave their most faithful representation, 



their time of duration, and the epoch of their discovery. It has been 

 urged as a reproach against Linnaeus, his not having sufficiently pro- 

 fited by the more recent observations of foreign authors; but it was 

 easier to make this reproach than to prevent it. The work received 

 many supplements in a second edition, and it can only be gradually en- 

 riched by the botanical discoveries of posterity. ' 



One of the chief excellencies of this work was also the reformation 

 of the botanical technology, which Linn/eus effo6led by the energy of 

 genius and expression. It consisted in the introduQion of the trivial 

 names, by which one or two adjeftives at farthest, distinguish a plant 

 from all its other relative species. Where these adjeflives could not 

 be applied, he gave the plants epithets borrowed from their inventors, 

 or the place of their growth. In the margin of the long definitions of 

 the distinftive marks of each species [charaBeres specijici), he added the 

 modern trivial names. Professor Rivin at Leipzic, once conceived an 

 idea of such a reform *. But all the honour and merit resulting from it 

 belongs to Linnaeus, and it was the more favourably received, in pro- 



• See RiviNi's Introduitio Generalis in Rem Herbariam. Leifs. 1690 and 1710. 



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