The vegetable system. Or, the internal structure and the life of plants; their parts, and nourishment explained; their classes, orders, genera, and species, ascertained, and described; in a method altogether new: Comprehending an artificial index and a natural system. With figures of all plants designed and engraved by the author. The whole from nature only. 26 vols.

This very extensive work consisting of 26 vols. in folio, with a total of 1548 plates, was the first comprehensive vernacular presentation of botany adopting Linnean generic names and binary nomenclature. It describes and illustrates about 26,000 plants. "The first volume (1759) is still in the old [i.e. pre-Linnaean] style, but from the second volume onward ... Linnaean binomials are used, although the sexual system is not followed ... Volume 5 contains 'observations on a natural method, so far as it regards the connection of the classes.' Hill's natural system was well worth studying but his voice remained unheard ... Hill was perhaps erratic and unconvincing ... but he was one of the first to rebel against Linnaeus's artificial system and essentialist classification" (F.A. Stafleu Linnaeus and the Linnaeans, Utrecht: 1971, p. 210)