botanically arranged.

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ingly numerous; not only furnishing food and medicine forman and beast, materials for agriculture, and various arts andmanufactures, and for many of the delights and Ornaments oflife ; but it supplies important articles of commerce, and, insome countries, is the greatest source of internal wealth. Weare, no doubt, yet ignorant of many productions well adaptedto most, or all, of those purposes.

The native Indians were acquainted with the peculiar proper-ties of certain vegetable productions, which if thoroughly un-derstood by the present inhabitants, might be made extensivelyuseful, both in physic, arts and manufactures, and new branchesof commerce. Their materia medica seems to have consisted offew articles ; these were certain plants, powerful in their Operation,and sometimes producing sudden and surprising effects upon thehuman body. These savages seem to have had better ideas ofthe medical virtues of plants, than some who have imagined thatvegetables, fit only for food, were the most proper for medi-cine ; and that combining a great number of the most com-mon plants, might be a remedy for almost every disease. Vege-tables called poisonous are capable of producing great and sud-den alterations in the human body: May not many of them befound, upon accurate and well-judged experiments, like somechymical poisons, to be the best medianes ? The Indians haddiscovered effectual antidotes against the venom of rattle-snakes,which must have been a discovery of great importance to them,and may, possibly, be reckoned among their greatest improve-ments in the knowledge of medicine. Mr. Catesby mentions afact, which he says was well attested, of an Indian's daubinghimself with the juice of the purple bindweed, a species of theconvolvulus, and then handling a rattle-snake with his nakedhands, without receiving any injury. The