24 
The history of BOTANY. 
Such Is the Hiftory of Botany during the empire of the Romans. Th"^ 
rudiments of the fclence were Imported from Old Greece j but tho’ Greeks 
wrote afterward, thefe were very little extended. 
period the third. 
The State of BOTANY among the ARABIANS. 
CHAP. VI. 
The Revival of the Science under the Caliphs. 
'^HAT knowledge of the Vegetable World, which Egypt learned 
from the Chaldceans, and which being received in early Greece, was 
there exalted to a fclence, declined during the Roman empire, and died 
with it. That people had negledted it extremely ; and tho’ many Greeks, 
celebrated for their knowledge, wrote under their government, the befl: 
they did w’as copying their mafters. We now mufl: view the fcience in 
another JEra. After a period of more than three hundred years, wherein 
this and all other learntd arts lay utterly uncultivated. Botany revived 
among the Arabs. 
In the year of Christ 754, the fecond Caliph, Al Mansur, a 
philofopher and fcholar, fired with the praife bellowed upon the Grecian 
knowledge, gave order that the mod valuable of the writings of that 
-people fliould be tranflated into his language. Something was done: but 
the great path he opened lay untrodden after him, till the feventh Caliph, 
Al Mamunem. This patron of the ufeful arts, applied with a new 
fpirit to w'hat Al Mansur had fo w’ell begun : he fought from Greece, 
by embafiies, whatever writings were mod: refpedled in their philofophy ; 
and fcience, in the year 832, took root among his people. He who had 
thus obtained the Grecian writings, invited next, by his liberalities, all 
the learned to join in an undertaking of tranflating them : peculiar names 
among thefe people, now grew eminent in medicine and in philofophy : 
each had his deftined part in the great workj and the Caliph him- 
