How long does it take to read The Botanic Garden?
Erasmus Darwin
The Botanic Garden by Erasmus Darwin takes about 5 hours 6 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 6 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1700. 278 pages, about 76,450 words.
11 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours 30 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 6 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 11 minutes |
The page count is the median across 38 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
One of the first popular science books, the intent of The Botanic Garden is to pique readers' interest in science while educating them at the same time. By embracing Linnaeus's sexualized language, which anthropomorphizes plants, Darwin makes botany interesting and relevant to his readers, but his reliance on conventional images of women when describing plants and flowers reinforces traditional gender stereotypes. Darwin emphasizes the connections between humanity and plants, arguing that they are all part of the same natural world and that sexual reproduction is at the heart of evolution (ideas that his grandson, Charles Darwin, would later turn into a full-fledged theory of evolution). This evolutionary theme continues in The Economy of Vegetation which contends that scientific progress is part of evolution and urges its readers to celebrate inventors and scientific discoveries in a language usually reserved for heroes or artistic geniuses.
Subjects: Botany, Natural history, Plants, Poetry, Poetry. [from old catalog], Portland vase
