Grew's last work was the _Cosmologia Sacra_[4], a folio volume occupied with a defence of Christianity, and an explanation of the author's views on the nature of the Universe. There is a copy in the British Museum, the earlier part of which is crowded with marginal and fly-leaf notes, in some cases initialled or even signed in full by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. One cannot help recalling Charles Lamb's humorous complaint that books lent to Coleridge were apt to be returned "with usury; enriched with annotations tripling their value ... in _matter_ oftentimes, and almost in _quantity_ not unfrequently, vying with the originals." Coleridge seems to have accepted Grew quite seriously as a thinker. In one of his manuscript notes we read, "It is from admiration of Dr N. Grew, and my high estimate of his Powers, that I am almost tempted to say, that the Reasonings in Chapt. III _ought_ to have led him to the perception of the _essential phænomenality_ of Matter." That these reasonings did _not_ so lead him, must, I think, be attributed to the fact that Grew was above all things a naturalist, and Coleridge a philosopher, and that between the two an intellectual gulf is often fixed. After this somewhat lengthy introduction, it is more than time to turn to our main subject,--the study of Nehemiah Grew's work as a botanist. Botanical science was in a decidedly decadent condition when Grew entered the field. The era of the herbal was closing. The last English book of any importance which can strictly be included under this head, Parkinson's _Theatrum Botanicum_, was published the year before Grew was born, and a lull in this kind of work followed. It is true that Culpeper's _Herbal_ appeared later, but this bombastic work was of no botanical value. It was reserved for Morison and Ray to open a new era in British Systematic Botany. At the same time, fresh inspiration was being breathed into the science from quite a different quarter. The herbalists studied plants primarily with a view to understanding their medicinal properties. Nehemiah Grew also approached Botany in the first instance from the medical standpoint, but it was his knowledge of anatomy which opened his mind to the possibility of similar work, with the bodies of plants, instead of those of animals, as the subject. He tells us that he was impressed by the fact that the study of animal anatomy had been carried on actively from early ages, whereas that of vegetable anatomy had been scarcely so much as contemplated. "But considering," he continues, "that both came at first out of the same Hand, and are therefore the Contrivances of the same Wisdom; I thence fully assured my self, that it could not be a vain Design, though possibly unsuccessful, to seek it in both."