The history of BOTANY. 25 
felf, from time to time, infpefled their progrefs, andjoinedintheirre- 
fearches. 
Botany now put on a better face ; and promifed more in this new 
region than any where, excepting in her native foil. Ages had pafled 
fince their days vvhofe writings now became once more the bafis of all 
knowledge; and much had been done, and much known, tho’ rudely and 
irregularly hitherto, among the Arabians themfelves. This they added to 
the {lores they drew from the old Greece j and they became adopters 
and improvers of Botanic Knowledge: not content to be what the late 
Greeks had been, mere Haves and copyids of their predeceffors. Thefe 
Arabs were an intermediate race between the Greek andRom.an dates, and 
ours ; and it is, indeed, to them Europe owes, much more than to any 
others, its prefent knowledge of medicine. 
Serapio, the fird in point of time, perhaps alfo the fird in genius, 
among the Arabs, lived in the days of that fecond Caliph who undertook 
the introduction of the Grecian arts among his people : perhaps it is to this 
writer we owe the attention which that Caliph fhewed to them. He col- 
lected whatever he could find relating to medicine, among the authors 
either of Greece or his country, reduced all to order, and enriched the 
compilation with much knowledge of his own. He knew feveral of the 
Greek Plants well; and afcertaining the before vague and uncertain mean- 
ing of their names, made thus the fird advance among the Arabs, toward 
the improvement of Botanic Knowledge. 
Razis appears confiderable after Serapio, and he had opportunities 
to have done much more than the other. Serapio lived before and dur- 
ing the time of the fird attempt to introduce the Grecian learning into 
his country ; but Razis followed after almod two centuries, within which 
period that feventh Caliph had appeared, who perfected the work the fe- 
cond had begun ; and when all the Grecian knowledge had been almod 
a hundred years familiar in his country. That part of the Materia Me- 
dica which is obtained from Plants, led Razis to fpeak upon this fubjeCt ; 
but It makes only a fmall article of his works ; and all we learn from it is, 
that tho’ Botany had continued advancing, rather than declining, from Se- 
RAPio’s time to his, it yet had received but little addition. 
Dioscorides and Galen were the oracles of the fucceeding Avi- 
cenna ; but he added alfo fomething from the improvements of his coun- 
trymen ; and fome portion of knowledge, tho’ dill lefs, from his own. 
He feems to have known many Plants ; and it mud not be denied, that 
fomething is added to the Botany of his country, tho’ it be not much, in 
VoL. 1 . E his 
