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''A Specimen of the Botany of New Holland was the first published book on the flora of Australia. Written by James Edward Smith and illustrated by James Sowerby, it was published by Sowerby in four parts between 1793 and 1795. It consists of 16 colour plates of paintings by Sowerby, mostly based on sketches by John White, and around 40 pages of accompanying text. It was presented as the first volume in a series, but no further volumes were released.''

AMID all the beauty and variety which the vegetable productions of New Holland display in such profusion, there has not yet been discovered a proportionable degree of usefulness to mankind, at least with respect to food. This is our first and most natural enquiry in a scene of such novelty; but it is an enquiry natural to all the lower orders of sensible beings, as well as to man. It may perhaps mortify his pride to think how much more quickly and certainly inferior animals judge upon such a subject. Their powers however reach no farther. It is the peculiar privilege of reasoning man, not only to extend his enquiries to a multiplicity of attainable benefits to himself and his species, besides the mere animal necessity of food, but also to walk with God through the garden of creation, and be initiated into the different plants of his providence in the construction and œconomy of all these various beings; to study their dependencies upon one another in an infinitely complex chain, every link of which is essential; and to trace out all those various uses and benefits to every branch of the animal creation, of which each animal is a judge only for himself. In this point of view no natural production is beneath the notice of the philosopher, nor any enquiry trifling under the guidance of a scientific mind.
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Featured June 2009