Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/381

 Rh Superintending Mind is displayed throughout Nature, in whatever way we contemplate her productions.

When we take into consideration the multitude of species which compose the vegetable kingdom, even in any one country or climate, it is obvious that some arrangement, some regular mode of naming and distinguishing them, must be very desirable, and even necessary, for retaining them in our own memory, or for communicating to others any thing concerning them. Yet the antients have scarcely used any further classification of plants than the vague and superficial division into trees, shrubs and herbs, except a consideration of their places of growth, and also of their qualities. The earlier botanists among the moderns almost inevitably fell into some rude arrangement of the objects of their study, and distributed them under the heads of Grasses, Bulbous plants, Medicinal or Eatable plants, &c., in which their successors made several improvements, but it is not worth while to contemplate them.

The science of Botanical Arrangement first assumed a regular form under the auspices of Conrad Gesner and Caesalpinus, who,