of botany was inconsiderable ; for, near the Christian 
era, Dioscorides, who followed Hippocrates, and 
Theophrastus, enumerated but about 600 plants. Pli- 
ny, in the year 74, from a careful examination of 
nearly 2000 volumes of Greek and Roman authors, 
increased the list to nearly 1000. 
In the succeeding- 1400 years, which brings us 
through the dark ages, nearly all that had been 
done consisted in the collection of fragments from 
the wreck of the ancients, and mingling them with 
superstition and error. Not more than 500 new 
plants were noticed through so great a space of time. 
The whole, too, were still in chaotic confusion. 
During the sixteenth century, vegetable history 
made a rapid stride. Classification commenced; 
printing lent her aid ; and Clusius, Gesner, Caesal- 
pinus, Rauhin, and their contemporaries, did more 
than had been effected in all the previous ages of 
the world. Between the years 1600 and 1700, 
Morison, Ray, Tournefort, Boerhaave, and several 
others, gave splendid specimens of industry and 
penetration. At this time, about 6000 plants were 
registered, and classed agreeably to different systems ; 
each arrangement ingenious, but still defective in 
practice. It remained for the celebrated Linneus, 
in the last century, to promulgate a system of clas- 
sification, at once fraught with ingenuity, and simple 
in practice. He published nearly 9000 distinct 
species of plants, and left the science so attractive to 
his successors, that the avidity with which it has 
been pursued, has already increased the number of 
described plants to nearly 40000, independent of 
cryptogamous subjects. 
Hort. Kew. 2, v. 1, 354. 
