HISTORY OF BOTANY. 
53 
all the plants growing on our globe is certainly unlimited, and can only 
be alledgedupon supposition and conjefture. Linnaus counted after- 
wards 10,000 species of them, and described upwards of 8,000. One 
of his subsequent adversaries, the French botanist, Ad an son, who 
made several discoveries in his African travels, estimated the number 
of those plants which were known, but not properly discriminated, at 
18, poo, 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 Li.nn.iE an 
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 stru&ure, properties, and 
distinctive marks. In other respeCts they formed their cohesions 
without order, without any particular classification; 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, which waited to receive 
its more direCt limitation and arrangement from some creative 
hand. There was 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 chstinaion 
and classification could alone elucidate the original descents, and their. 
various branches and affinities. 
In a state thus debile and infirm, botany was handed down to a bar- 
barous and superstitious eera, in which the cultivation of the sciences 
was- 
