The history of BOTANY. 
CHAP. V. 
Of the State of Botany, from Pliny to the Time of 
the Arabians. 
'“T^H E Romans had been waked to a fenfe of the importance of a know- 
ledge of Plants by Dioscorides; tho’ the Greeks, celebrated as 
they were in all other arts, had not caught from their own Theophras- 
tus the facred fire of fcience. That curious fubjedl, the Philofophy of 
Plants, had lain negledled all this period, and was to lie in that dead 
fiate much longer; but from the time of Pliny, Plants, fo far as they 
concerned medicine, or the ufeful arts, became greatly regarded. Rufus 
wrote of them in this light under Trajan ; and after him Palladius 
became eminent in the whole art of Agriculture : fo far as Plants were 
concerned within the limits of this fubjccff, he treated of them, but no 
farther. The Romans extended the ufes of Herbs, but the fcience of 
Botany was more known in early Greece. About a hundred and fifty 
years after Christ, Galen appeared upon the theatre of the world ; a 
Greek, as Dioscorides, tho’ under the Roman empire. He has been 
celebrated highly ; and tho,’ perhaps, he deferves lefs than feme have faid, 
his merit, the value of his writing', is confiderable. An attention to the 
hiftory of drugs, polTcfied him even to enthufiafm : not content with what 
he faw of them, or what he heard or read concerning their hiftory, he 
vifited the places whence they came ; Lemnos, for its earth ; and Paleftine, 
to fee the Opobalfamum. 
Plants, which make fo confiderable a part of the Materia Medica, 
fhared his attention in a juft proportion ; but ftill it was as a Phyfician 
that he confidcred them ; not as a Botanift. He feems to have been ac- 
quainted with about five hundred. Their virtues were the objedt of bis 
fearch : and thefe he has charadtered accordir^ to certain degrees of their 
imagined general qualities, hot, cold, moift, dry, and the like. 
Galen does not appear to have attended to the improvement of Botany, 
or if he had, the talk had been too great for him. The fcience, which 
had rofe with Theophrastus, continued to decline, and was now fink- 
ing faft into barbarifm. A confufion of names, and ill conceived de- 
feriptions, obfeured the little light which had once (hone upon the fubjedl ; 
and all tended faft to general ignorance. Pliny had condemned the ufe 
