25 
The history of BOTANY. 
of a much earlier date j but fuperior by many degrees to his immediate 
predeceflbrs. Twenty years after Platearius, Sylvaticus publiflicd 
a great work on medicine ; but he had undertaken more than he could 
perform ; and with a defign of explaining terms, he rendered them more 
obfcure. Sylvaticus lived about the year 1320, and he appears to have 
known little of Plants. The fame period furnilhed three other writers 
fcarce better than the lad : thefe were Villa Nova, Dondis, and Pe- 
ter Crescentiensis. This latter wrote exprefsly upon Plants thro’ a 
great part of his treatife, but with a degree of ignorance fcarce to be 
equalled. The miferable date of literature continued j yet men wrote, 
and wrote of Plants. More than a hundred years after thefe drange au- 
thors, Cuba publilhed his Hortus Sanitatis, in 14865 and he was 
followed by Thertona, De Bosco and Suardus. The lad of 
thefe wrote his Antidotarium in 1526: the others their feveral pieces 
fomewhat earlier : all fpoke of Plants, but with mod perfedl ignorance ; 
nor had they language worthy even of their poor conceptions. The writ- 
ers of an earlier time, to whom they referred, were Ibme of the lateid 
Arabians: as to the Greeks, they did not fo much as properly know their 
names. They fhew they could not fpell Hippocrates. 
PERIOD THE FIFTH. 
The STATE of BOTANY at the New Dawn 
of Literature. 
T hus, for four centuries, Barbarifm overfpread the world ; from the 
days of Ebenbitar, the lad of the Arabians, to the latter end of 
the fifteenth century. Then dawned upon the world the fird light of a 
revival of letters ; and Botany was early regarded by thofe who fhine mod 
confpicuous in that undertaking. It is fingular, that in this fcience we 
owe all to Greece : there the fird rudiments of Botany were edablifhed ; 
and that Gaza was a Greek, who in a manner began the redoration of 
learning at this period, by a tranflation, fird of Aristotle, and then of. 
Theophrastus, into Latin. This led the way ; and the father of the 
fcience had afterwards fo many commentators, that Botany was plainly a 
much edeemed fcience. The works of this great author, as they had been 
the original, became now the fecond bafis of all Botany; and Scaliger 
^nd 
