15 The history of BOTANY. 
new birth among the world of letters. What that celebrated prince knew 
of Plants, and of their virtues, appear'd of fo much importance to the 
wife Romans, that the Conqueror ordered the writings of Mithridates to 
be tranflated by Lenaeus *, and men applied, in fome degree, to the ftudy : 
yet they made fmall advances. Cato, and Valgius, and Varro, are 
the principal names celebrated on this account : but a few obfervations on 
the virtues and ceconomical ufes of a very fmall number of Herbs, was all 
the world obtained from their refearches. Antonius Musa and Euphor- 
Bus, born, as it Ihould feem, to bring the Grecian medic arts to Rome, 
grew famous about the fame time. The former of thefe is celebrated for 
a treatife on the Plant Vetonica, the firft of the Botanical Monograph!. 
We have the name alfo of an ^Emilius Macer, of whom we read in 
Ovid, and who wrote in verfe of Plants ; but by all we know, this aUo 
was limited to their virtues; a poem not botanic but medicinal. Bassus 
and Niger wrote in Greek of Plants, fome fmall time before Dioscori- 
DES, but if that author’s account of them be true, if the one was prolix 
and idle in his manner, an ignorant and injudicious compiler ; and the other 
took Aloe to be a mineral ; we need not much lament the lofs of what 
they wrote. Thefe Columella followed, eminent for his account of the 
ancient Hufbandry ; but what he has written of the Field Plants, or Gar- 
den Flowers, adds nothing to the Botanic Science. Of Dioscorides we 
have fpoken ; and a fmall period after him came Pliny. 
This name, treated too often with an implicit reverence. Truth, and a 
ftridf enquiry into the Hiftory of Botany, would oblige Candour itfelf a 
little to prophane. Pliny muft not be ranked among the original writers; 
nor can it be faid this fcience owed to him any new light, or the lead: ad- 
vance toward improvement. Flis merit is that of a Colledtor only ; but as ^ 
he gathered from the writings of authors now loft, his work is highly valu- 
able. Perhaps the botanical part has lefs worth than moft of the others ; 
but this, if ufed with caution, is not without its merit. As he colledled 
generally, all that he has put down is not of equal authenticity. The works 
of Theophrastus and of Dioscorides plainly were before him ; and he 
has taken from them largely : other ftrange matter has its place among what 
he has thus colleded ; and probably we owe it to the BafTus and the Niger 
named before, or to one or other of thofe authors, whom, tho’ not much 
to their honour, Dioscorides quotes as having written a little before him, 
Jolas, and Tarentinus Niceratus, another Niger, and a Diodo-? 
Tus condemned to eternal memory, by their imperfedfions. All thefe 
were before Pliny ; therefore he might ufe their writings, and by a great 
2 deal 
