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 j no part of them had the special privilege of being 
considered as the distinctive 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 politics of an Italian, first felt after Gesner the incon- 
venience occasioned by this defeCt. This was Andrew C^salpinus, 
born at Arezzo, in the district of Florence, in 1519, first professor of 
physic and botany at the University of Pisa, and afterwards first 
physician to Pope Clement VIII. at Rome, where he died 1603. 
The idea of such a want, being besides a lover of order, which he had 
learned to value 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 his knowledge of botany neither original nor uni- 
versal. He missed both leisure and opportunity. Cl u si us had dis- 
covered more fresh plants than he ever was acquainted with. His her- 
bal did not contain nine hundred species, a fact fully proved by the 
Florentine Botanist Micheli, who had it in his possession. A pro- 
vision of this kind was too small to give a comprehensive view of bo- 
tany, and the knowledge which CvEsalpinus acquired of the internal 
structure of plants, was too secret and too defective to point out the 
most perfeCt order. He was only directed by the fruit, and mostly by 
that part on which the shoots or germins repose. This system had its 
defeCts, but it brought C/Esalpinus much nearer to the truth, and he 
discovered 
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