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INTRODUCTION TO BOTANY.
2. The Rise and Progress of Botany, part'tcularly iw England.
The modern botanists, who, are overwhelmed with the
continually increasing number of new plants offered to their
view, and the necessity of learning the ever-varying nomenclature,
are accused, perhaps with some justice, of
paying less attention to the uses of plants than they ought
and, on the other hand, the ancients seem to have had no
other idea of botany than as being the knowledge of the
grains, pulse, potherbs, &c. of use in domestic economy,
or of those plants which chance, or experiments made in
the great hierarchal colleges of Persia or Egypt, had shown
to be of use in the cure of the sick and hurt; for it appears
by the Greek authors, whose writings have survived
the barbarism which took place in Europe on the subversion
of the Western Empire by the northern nations,
that it was the intention of the early Greek writers, in their
botanical works, rather to relate the uses or culture of
plants, than to describe them so that posterity might be
enabled to recognize them whenever they were met with.
Hippocrates the Coan, the venerable father of medicine,
the lineal descendant of that Esculapius whom the gratitude
of mankind had raised to divine honours, is the oldest
author we possess, being born about four hundred and fifty
years before Christ. Those who are versed in the history
of medicine, well know the valuable use he made of the
cases recorded in the temples of his ancestor, which were
the public hospitals of antiquity, especially in respect to
the prognosis of diseases. He has mentioned, in his theiapeutic
writings, the uses of about two hundred and forty
plants; and he would have merited still more the thanks
of mankind, if he had carefully described them, so that
we might be certain of the species of plants which he intended
by those names,—This task he seems to have left
to Cratevas, of whose knowledge in botany he makes the
most honourable mention. The loss of the works of Cratevas
is much to be deplored, as they probably contained
the description, or at least place of growth, of the plants
mentioned by Hippocrates.
The expansion of the human intellect which took place
in consequence of the freedom of opinion that was allowed
in Athens, under the mild but firm government of Pisis-
tratus, by which the factious demagogues and the priest
©f that city were restrained from persecuting every man
;