LOVES OF THE PLANTS, which is here presented to the Reader, the Sexual
System of LINNEUS is explained, with the remarkable properties of many
particular plants.

The author has withheld this work, (excepting a few pages) many years
from the press, according to the rule of Horace, hoping to have rendered
it more worthy the acceptance of the public,--but finds at length, that
he is less able, from disuse, to correct the poetry; and, from want of
leizure, to amplify the annotations.

In this second edition, the plants Amaryllis, Orchis, and Cannabis are
inserted with two additional prints of flowers; some alterations are made
in Gloriosa, and Tulipa; and the description of the Salt-mines in Poland
is removed to the first poem on the Economy of Vegetation.



PREFACE.


Linneus has divided the vegetable world into 24 Classes; these Classes
into about 120 Orders; these Orders contain about 2000 Families, or
Genera; and these Families about 20,000 Species; besides the innumerable
Varieties, which the accidents of climate or cultivation have added to
these Species.

The Classes are distinguished from each other in this ingenious system,
by the number, situation, adhesion, or reciprocal proportion of the males
in each flower. The Orders, in many of these Classes, are distinguished
by the number, or other circumstances of the females. The Families, or