CHAPTER III.
GENERAL STATE OF LEARNED SOCIETIES IN ENGLAND.
The progress of knowledge convinced the world that the system of the division of labour and of cooperation was as applicable to science, as it had been found available for the improvement of manufactures. The want of competition in science produced effects similar to those which the same cause gives birth to in the arts. The cultivators of botany were the first to feel that the range of knowledge embraced by the Royal Society was too comprehensive to admit of sufficient attention to their favourite subject, and they established the Linnean Society. After many years, a new science arose, and the Geological Society was produced. At an another and more recent epoch, the friends of astronomy, urged by the wants of their science, united
