BOTANICAL REFORM. 
97 
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celebrated Ehret, which rendered the work dearer than any other 
ever published by Linn^us. Cliffort 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 twenty-three 
crowns per copy. 
Linn^us had arranged the plants in this work after his own system. 
A meritorious undertaking — as, by it, more light find greater order were 
diffused. The celebrated Swiss botanist Gesner*, one of the foreign 
friends of Linnaeus, gave the following opinion of the Hortus Cliff or~ 
tianus, in aletterto Baron Haller. (i An excellent production indeed, 
“ full of ingenious opinions, and as replete with erudition as any bo- 
“ tenist 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. 
“ B resembles a chaos,” said Linn as us, “ the mother of which is ig- 
‘ { norance, the father custom, and the fosterer prejudice.” — Bold enough 
to hurl into ruins that gothic struSure to which several living old 
artists had contributed, and to exhibit the grounds of his innovations 
and reforms, he published his Crilica Botanica at Leyden , on 228 pages, 
* John Gesner was born at Zurich, on the iSth of March, 171 9, and died on the 6th 
of May, 1790. 
+ Opus sane egregium et acerrimi judicii, nec minoris eruditionis, quo difficulter Botanicus 
carebit; mihi perplacet, ab eo (Linnaeo) in nominibus specierum notas earum essentiales ex 
hiberi, quod ante quisquam botaincus rette praestiterit. See Epist, ad Alb. Halle rum vol 
H'. Berne, 1773, p» 6. 
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