The great Author of all things intended that the whole earth should be covered with plants, and that no place should be void or barren. But since all countries have not the same changes of seasons, and every soil is not equally adapted to every plant; therefore, that no place should be without some, he gave to each of them such a nature as might be chiefly accommodated to their own climate: so that some of them can bear intense cold, others an equal degree of heat; some delight in dry ground, others in moist, &c. Hence plants grow where the seasons of the year and the soil are friendly to their constitution. Grasses, the most common of all plants, can bear almost any temperature of air: in this the good providence of the Creator particularly appears; for all over the globe they are necessary for the nourishment of cattle. The same is observed in relation to our most common grains. Thus neither the scorching sun, nor the pinching cold, hinders any country from having vegetables. Nor is there any soil which does not bring forth many kinds of plants. Deserts and sandy places are adorned with trees and plants. If we connect the vast fecundity of vegetables with their number, how bountiful will the great Author of nature appear! Solomon had a comprehensive knowledge of the different species of plants, for he “spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall;” but his writings on this subject, not being quoted by any ancient author, nor the least fragment remaining, are entirely lost. Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher, who succeeded Aristotle in his school at Athens, where his name became so celebrated that he was attended by two thousand pupils, wrote a work entitled “The History of Plants,” in which above 500 different plants are described. Dioscorides, a Grecian by birth, but under the Roman empire, a physician and botanist in the time of Nero, being near 300 years posterior to Theophrastus, describes about 600 plants. Pliny the elder,[100] in his voluminous work entitled “The History of the World,” gives descriptions of above 1,000 different species of plants. Hieronymus Bock, or Bouc, a German, generally known by the name of _Tragus_, in 1532, published a History of Plants, in which he describes 800 species.