The history of BOTANY. 
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PERIOD THE FIRST. 
The Eftablifliment of Science in ancient Greece. 
CHAP. I. 
The botany of THEOPHRASTUS. 
''^HEOPHRASTUS, a great and a difcerning writer, didinguiflbed 
himfelf early among the Greeks in Botany, and became the foun- 
der of the fcience. He dudied Plants as a philofopher ; thofe who wrote 
before him having confidered little of them, except their medicinal vir- 
tues : He appears, therefore, in the honourable lift of original Writers, and 
as the fird of them on this fubjedt. He ftudied Vegetables as Vegetables ; 
fearching, in their conftrudlion and appearances, their nature, origin, and 
caufe of growth. On thefe enquiries he beftowed all that attention which 
diftinguilhed him to the period of his very long life ; and in declaring what 
he had thus learned concerning Plants, he difclofed all that eloquence for 
which his mafter, Aristotle, named him the Divine Speaker. No 
Egypt gave this parent of the fcience his firrt: rudiments, nor did he adopt 
from any his defign : his was a fuhjedl left untouched by his celebrated 
mader in philofophy ; and It was all his own : the book of nature lay be- 
fore him, and in that only he appears to have read. From that alone he 
deduced thofe obfervations and definitions on which he edablidied his fyf- 
tem ; and made Botany a fcience. 
To view the exterior forms of Plants, to write an index of their names, 
or trace the nice didindtions of one fpecies from another, in their minute 
organs, was no part of the undertaking : his was a greater fubjedl ; and to 
have known but one Plant, as he examined them, is greater than to have 
delivered the mechanic marks, or got by rote the more than the fefquipe- 
dalian names of our whole thirteen thoufand. Thofe who objedl to this 
author’s works, as imperfedf, feem to midake his purpofe. To fay he 
knew but a few Plants, is rafh : for he has named thofe only which fer- 
ved his proper defign. Thefe are about five hundred j and it is more the 
modern indolence, than the obfcurity of the fubjedt, which prevents our 
B 2 know- 
