Florentine Garden

mysteries, so that nothing seems able to be brought forward that is more accurate or absolute. But it would truly be arduous and laborious in Botanical Practice, which must look almost entirely toward the utility of Medicine and Pharmacy, to follow those minute and overly subtle differences which constitute the Linnaean characters: not to mention the new nomenclatures by which the whole of Botanical Science is almost disturbed (1), so that once this method is admitted, the wicked labors of all the Botanists who have gone before, and the monuments which remain, would be of no use thereafter. Furthermore, more Plants of this Garden and the seeds collected from them could be enumerated in this Index, if I had not been away from the Garden, as I have indicated, for a period of two months and more, and thus had been able to enjoy longer leisure to examine and restore to their proper places many others that had arisen confusedly or had been recently received.

(1) The most learned Linnaeus excises many species of Plants as fortuitous differences and spurious varieties: and indeed, from some observations accurately instituted by the same person concerning the sex of Plants and their marriages, and thence repeated and confirmed by the most experienced Gmelin, it is clearly evident that hybrid Plants arise and those spurious varieties do not extend to the leaves only, but also to the very parts serving the formation of Flowers and Fruits, and thence in the course of time those differences vanish and the Plants return to their original species; By which we can also make the conjecture that countless new varieties of Plants will be found daily, although remarkable to the eyes, which will finally vanish because they are spurious, as one may suppose has happened to many Plants recounted by the Ancients, of which we have no knowledge anymore.
(1) See the Dissertation of the most learned Heister on the useful and harmful change of Plant names. In 4. Helmstadt.