A CHAPTER II. UNSYSTEMATIC KNOWLEDGE OF PLANTS. STEP was made towards the formation of the Science of Plants, although undoubtedly a slight one, as soon as men began to collect information concerning them and their properties, from a love and reverence for knowledge, independent of the passion for the marvellous and the impulse of practical utility. This step was very early made. The "wisdom" of Solomon, and the admiration which was bestowed upon it, prove, even at that period, such a working of the speculative faculty: and we are told, that among other evidences of his being "wiser than all men," "he spake of trees, from the cedartree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall." The father of history, Herodotus, shows us that a taste for natural history had, in his time, found a place in the minds of the Greeks. In speaking of the luxuriant vegetation of the Babylonian plain, he is so far from desiring to astonish merely, that he says, "the blades of wheat and barley are full four fingers wide; but as to the size of the trees which grow from millet and sesame, though I could mention it, I will not; knowing well that those who have not been in that country will hardly believe what I have said already." He then proceeds to describe some remarkable circumstances respecting the fertilization of the date-palms in Assyria. This curious and active spirit of the Greeks led rapidly, as we have seen in other instances, to attempts at collecting and systematizing knowledge on almost every subject: and in this, as in almost every other department, Aristotle may be fixed upon, as the representative of the highest stage of knowledge and system which they ever attained. The vegetable kingdom, like every other province of nature, was one of the fields of the labors of this universal philosopher. But though his other works on natural history have come down to us, and are a most valuable monument of the state of such knowledge in his time, his Treatise on Plants is lost. The book De Plantis 1 1 Kings iv. 33. 2 Herod. i. 193. which appears with his name, is an imposture of the middle ages, full of errors and absurdities. His disciple, friend, and successor, Theophrastus of Eresos, is, as we Lave said already, the first great writer on botany whose works we possess; and, as may be said in most cases of the first great writer, he offers to us a richer store of genuine knowledge and good sense than his successors. But we find in him that the Greeks of his time, who aspired, as we have said, to collect and systematize a body of information on every subject, failed in one half of their object, as far as related to the vegetable world. Their attempts at a systematic distribution of plants were altogether futile. Although Aristotle's divisions of the animal kingdom are, even at this day, looked upon with sdmiration by the best naturalists, the arrangements and comparisons of plants which were contrived by Theophrastus and his successors, have not left the slightest trace in the modern form of the science; and, therefore, according to our plan, are of no importance in our history. And thus we can treat all the miscellaneous information conseng vegetables which was accumulated by the whole of this school of writers, in no other way than as something antecedent to dost progress towards systematic knowledge. The information thus collected by the unsystematic writers is of various kinds; and relates to the economical and medicinal uses of pata ther Labis mode of cultivation, and many other circumstates: a frequently includes some description; but this is always extremely imperfect because the essential conditions of description lad ny bez dscovered. Of works composed of materials so heterogazova i am be of little use to produce specimens; but I may quote a new words from They hrastas, which may serve to connect him with the for me history of the science, as bearing upon one of the many prolic is asporing the identification of ancient and modern plants. 1. is ben made a question whether the following description does av når æ the potato He is speaking of the differences of roots: "Sorenesle sux "are still different from those which have been dewalt as that of the arachidna plant: for this bears fruit undermedsils above: the fleshy part sends one thick root deep into the ground at the others, which bear the fruit, are more slender * Mirdal Avaniyne ai du and higher up, and ramified. It loves a sandy soil, and has no leaf whatever." The books of Aristotle and Theophrastus soon took the place of the Book of Nature in the attention of the degenerate philosophers who succeeded them. A story is told by Strabo concerning the fate of the works of these great naturalists. In the case of the wars and changes which occurred among the successors of Alexander, the heirs of Theophrastus tried to secure to themselves his books, and those of his master, by burying them in the ground. There the manuscripts suffered much from damp and worms; till Apollonicon, a book-collector of those days, purchased them, and attempted, in his own way, to supply what time had obliterated. When Sylla marched the Roman troops iuto Athens, he took possession of the library of Apollonicon; and the works which it contained were soon circulated among the learned of Rome and Alexandria, who were thus enabled to Aristotelize on botany as on other subjects. The library collected by the Attalic kings of Pergamus, and the Alexandrian Museum, founded and supported by the Ptolemies of Egypt, rather fostered the commentatorial spirit than promoted the increase of any real knowledge of nature. The Romans, in this as in other subjects, were practical, not speculative. They had, in the times of their national vigor, several writers on agriculture, who were highly esteemed; but no author, till we come to Pliny, who dwells on the mere knowledge of plants. And even in Pliny, it is easy to perceive that we have before us a writer who extracted his information principally from books. This remarkable man, in the middle of a public and active life, of campaigns and voyages, contrived to accumulate, by reading and study, an extraordinary store of knowledge of all kinds. So unwilling was he to have his reading and note-making interrupted, that, even before day-break in winter, and from his litter as he travelled, he was wont to dictate to his amanuensis, who was obliged to preserve his hand from the numbness which the cold occasioned, by the use of gloves." It has been ingeniously observed, that we may find traces in the botanical part of his Natural History, of the errors which this hurried and broken habit of study produced; and that he appears frequently to have had books read to him and to have heard them amiss.10 Thus, among several other instances, Theophrastus having said that the planetree is in Italy rare," Pliny, misled by the similarity of the Greek word (spanian, rare), says that the tree occurs in Italy and Spain." His work has, with great propriety, been called the Encyclopædia of Antiquity; and, in truth, there are few portions of the learning of the times to which it does not refer. Of the thirty-seven Books of which it consists, no less than sixteen (from the twelfth to the twenty-seventh) relate to plants. The information which is collected in these books, is of the most miscellaneous kind; and the author admits, with little distinction, truth and error, useful knowledge and absurd fables. The declamatory style, and the comprehensive and lofty tone of thought which we have already spoken of as characteristic of the Roman writers, are peculiarly observable in him. The manner of his death is well known it was occasioned by the eruption of Vesuvius, A.D. 79, to which, in his curiosity, he ventured so near as to be suffocated. Pliny's work acquired an almost unlimited authority, as one of the standards of botanical knowledge, in the middle ages; but even more than his, that of his contemporary, Pedanius Dioscorides, of Anazarbus in Cilicia. This work, written in Greek, is held by the best judges" to offer no evidence that the author observed for himself. Yet he says expressly in his Preface, that his love of natural history, and his military life, have led him into many countries, in which he has had opportunity to become acquainted with the nature of herbs and trees.1 He speaks of six hundred plants, but often indicates only their names and properties, giving no description by which they can be identified. The main cause of his great reputation in subsequent times was, that he says much of the medicinal virtues of vegetables. We come now to the ages of darkness and lethargy, when the habit of original thought seems to die away, as the talent of original observation had done before. Commentators and mystics succeed to the philosophical naturalists of better times. And though a new race, altogether distinct in blood and character from the Greek, appropriates to itself the stores of Grecian learning, this movement does not, as might be expected, break the chains of literary slavery. The Arabs 11 Theoph. iv. 7. Εν μὲν γὰρ τῷ 'Αδρίᾳ πλάτανον οὐ φασὶν εἶναι πλὴν περὶ τὸ Διομήδους, ἱερόν, σπανίαν δὲ καὶ ἐν Ἰταλία πάσῃ. 12 Plin. Nat. Hist. xii. 3. Et alias (platanos) fuisse in Italia, ac nominatim Hispania, apud auctores invenitur. 13 Mirbel. 510. Sprengel, i. 136. bring, to the cultivation of the science of the Greeks, their own oriental habit of submission, their oriental love of wonder; and thus, while they swell the herd of commentators and mystics, they produce no philosopher. Yet the Arabs discharged an important function in the history of human knowledge," by preserving, and transmitting to more enlightened times, the intellectual treasures of antiquity. The unhappy dissensions which took place in the Christian church had scattered these treasures over the East, at a period much antecedent to the rise of the Saracen power. In the fifth century, the adherents of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, were declared heretical by the Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431), and driven into exile. In this manner, many of the most learned and ingenious men of the Christian world were removed to the Euphrates, where they formed the Chaldean church, erected the celebrated Nestorian school of Edessa, and gave rise to many offsets from this in various regions. Already, in the fifth century, Hibas, Cumas, and Probus, translated the writings of Aristotle into Syriac. But the learned Nestorians paid an especial attention to the art of medicine, and were the most zealous students of the works of the Greek physicians. At Djondisabor, in Khusistan, they became an ostensible medical school, who distributed academical honors as the result of public disputations. The califs of Bagdad heard of the fame and the wisdom of the doctors of Djondisabor, summoned some of them to Bagdad, and took measures for the foundation of a school of learning in that city. The value of the skill, the learning, and the virtues of the Nestorians, was so strongly felt, that they were allowed by the Mohammedans the free exercise of the Christian religion, and intrusted with the conduct of the studies of those of the Moslemin, whose education was most cared for. The affinity of the Syriac and Arabic languages made the task of instruction more easy. The Nestorians translated the works of the ancients out of the former into the latter language: hence there are still found Arabic manuscripts of Dioscorides, with Syriac words in the margin. Pliny and Aristotle likewise assumed an Arabic dress; and were, as well as Dioscorides, the foundation of instruction in all the Arabian academies; of which a great number were established throughout the Saracen empire, from Bokhara in the remotest east, to Marocco and Cordova in the west. After some time, the Mohammedans themselves began to translate and |