200 
REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES 
« Linnaeus, 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 examined particularly, 
and as his work was wholly botanical, he forbore to add their sanative 
virtues, confining himself t,o mention their native countries, their syno- 
nims, their purity, &c. Pie 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 Linnaeus effected by the energy of 
genius and expression. It consisted in the introduction of the trivial 
names, by which one or two adjectives at farthest, distinguish a plant 
from all its other relative species. Where these adjectives 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 distinctive marks of each species {char after es specifici), 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 Introduftio Generalis in Rem Herbariam. Leips. 1690 and 1720, 
portion 
