Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 004.djvu/48

 Botanicks and Medicine, the Argument, Order, and Usefulness of the same, interspersing withall the Causes and Origin of those many Errors, which both Antients and Moderns have fallen into upon this Subject; as also the negligence of those Antients; the Progress of Physick among the Romans; and the Age of the cheif Writers on this Argument: Adding also the Authors opinion concerning Pliny, what is to be approvd, what to be condemned in him, and how far we are to proceed in the admiration oi that Writer.

, I send you some Exemplars of the Introduction to a great Work, which M. Dela Mare'' and I have caus'd to be printed, to excite the Lovers of Learning to facilitate the impression of the Whole Book. I promise my selfe, that this Present will not he unacceptable to you, on well in respect of the Author, who, besides his great Learning generally known, had the Honour to he lov'd by his Majesty of G. Brittain, as for the worth of the Treatise it selfe; of which you may Judge by this'' Preface. Although it he a work altogether Critical, and which, Correcting only Errors about the Names of Simples, may seem to contribute but little to the knowledge of Nature, for the Advancement of which your Illustrious Society employs all its Studies and Labors with so much reputation; yet I may say, that even this Book may serve for the accomplishment of that great Design, forasmuch as in discovering the Errors and Negligence of the Antients, and of the Moderns that have follow'd them in the History of Plants, it shews the necessity there it to labour after a new ''Natural History, that may be free from those defects, if we intend to lay solid foundations for knowledge, and particularly for the Art of Medicine. In the mean time, those that practice it, being often constrain'd to use Simples, the virtue of which it not known to them but by the Experience of the Antients, may be Ayd of this Book avoid very dangerous mistakes.''

But what Judgment soever you shall make both of the Book and its Preface, I hall be satisfi'd, if you and your Illustrious Friends, (to whom I intreat you to present some of the Copies accompanying this,) shall receive them as a mark of my esteem of the R. Society, ''the design of which I admire as the Noblest, that ever was undertaken by men. I uncessantly praise their Industry, Prudence and Sincerity, and in finitely value the parts and knowledge of those, that compose it. And this occasion shal also serve Me to &c.''