HISTORY OF BOTANY. 
285 
lica. About this time Botanic gardens began to be cultivated: 
these afforded new opportunities for investigation, by compre- 
hending within such limits, vegetables of all countries, as ena- 
bled the botanist to compare them, and to watch them in their 
growth and different states of developement. 
From the days of Theophrastus until this period, botany in- 
stead of becoming more perfect had been rendered more obscure. 
This was not owing to want of attention or labour, but to the 
false rules of philosophy which had so long prevailed. 
At length the cause of the evil seemed to be discovered. 
Many writers protested against the erroneous opinions of their 
times ; they said, our blind respect for the ancients is an insur- 
mountable obstacle to the progress of botany. We expect to 
find every where the plants of Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and 
Pliny ; whereas they did not know one hundredth part of the 
plants which cover the globe. The first of them never went 
out of Greece; the second left only unconnected notes, treat- 
ing without order upon the medicinal qualities of plants ; and 
Pliny copied these notes without comment or criticism. We 
cannot apply to the plants of Germany or France the names 
under which the ancients described those of Italy, Greece, and 
Asia, before studying the plants of foreign countries, we ought 
to know those of our own. Of what use are disputes about the 
nature and qualities of species, when we are not able to distin- 
guish one from another. 
These reflections led to a happy revolution, not only in this 
science, but in all others; it may be called the era of true phi- 
losophy.* Although the principles, which were now discovered, 
were not much applied until the time of Bacon, Newton, Lin- 
meus and Locke, perhaps never so perfectly applied in inquiries 
into the nature of the mind as in the present century by Brown. 
Up to the period of which we are now speaking, plants had 
only been described in alphabetical order ; about this time some 
German botanists attempted something like a collection of plants 
into species ; this improvement was received with much appro- 
bation. 
* Lord Bacon is generally considered as having first taught the proper 
method of studying the sciences, viz : by ascending from facts to principles; 
this is called the method of induction. It ha3 recently been asserted by an 
able writer in one of our first American periodicals, that Bacon was not the 
author of the inductive philosphy, but that he borrowed his rules of philoso- 
phizing from Aristotle, whose real principles had for ages been misunderstood. 
It is to be hoped that men of talents will not so far depart from the true rules 
of philosophizing, as to devote that time in contending about the author of 
these rules, which might be so much more profitably employed in their ap- 
plication to the investigation of truth and nature. 
Botanic gardens first cultivated — Botanists began to discover the obsta- 
cle to the progress of the science Era of true philosophy. 
