SIR HANS SLOANE. 
45 
dedicated to the Royal Society and College of 
Physicians. “ This volume,” says Dr Pulteney, 
“ intrinsically valuable as it is, may yet be con- 
sidered as only the nomenclature or systematic 
index to his subsequent work. The arrangement 
of the subject (and which was strictly followed in 
the History) is nearly that of Mr Ray ; vegetables 
being thrown into twenty-five large natural classes 
or families. Among botanists of that time, 
generical characters had not attained any remark- 
able precision ; and Sloane, like Plukenet, was 
little farther anxious than to refer his new plants 
to some genus already established, without a 
minute attention to the parts of fructification, 
farther than as they formed part of the character 
drawn from habit ; yet, with this defect, the 
figures and descriptions of Sloane proved suffi- 
ciently accurate to enable his successors to refer 
almost all his species to the appropriate places in 
the system of the present day.” 
Eleven years after, appeared the first volume 
of his “ Natural History of Jamaica.” This is a 
splendid folio, entitled “ A Voyage to the Islands 
Madeira, Barbados, Nieves, St Christophers, and 
Jamaica, with the Natural History of the Herbs 
and Trees, Four-footed beasts, Fishes, Birds, 
Insects, Reptiles, &c. of the last of these islands, 
to which is prefixed an Introduction, wherein is 
an Account of the Inhabitants, Air, Waters, 
