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The first real starting-point of scientific botanical treatise of Theophrastus. By this we do not mean that he gave names to plants or invented any; they existed long before his time, both in common speech and in the early poets and other writers; but, with the exception of Aristotle, whose work on plants is lost, and Hippocrates, who only mentions plants so far as they are connected with medicine, he was the first writer on systematic botany who described the plants which others had only named. Of the older writers we need only mention Homer. He names very few plants,* but he is the first writer who mentions the palm (Odyss. vi. 163), and he, or rather the author of the Homeric Hymns, heads the long list of poets who have celebrated the narcissus or daffodil.

It is not necessary to refer to any other writers. None of them scientifically described the flowers which they named ; and though by all the Greek poets flowers are lovingly spoken of, the species named are few. But all the existing names, whether invented by the poets or in common use, were brought together by Theophrastus, who, as a pupil of Aristotle and Plato, and a ready writer, possessed good qualifications for writing a scientific treatise on botany; and his book, περὶ φυτῶν ἱστορίας βιβλία δέκα, is a good proof of his ability and research. It has not been so popular a book as his Characteres,' which has been translated into many languages, whereas the botanical treatise has seldom been translated, and never into English. How much botanical science, and especially botanical nomenclature, owes to Theophrastus, may be gathered from the fact that he names and describes about 380 plants, and of these names more than 270 are still in use for scientific purposes. In many cases the names are not now applied to the same plants to which Theophrastus applied them, but the names themselves remain, many of them unaltered from their original Greek form. Such names as Anthemis, Asclepias, Dolichos, Itea, Mentha, &c., are true Greek words, while many others are true Greek with a Latin termination, as Aconitum, Erica, Helleborus, Cistus, Cratægus, &c. And the influence of his names does not even stop there, for many are the popular English names also, and have been admitted as thoroughly established words in the English language: such are Crocus, Cyclamen, Hyacinth, Narcissus, Anemone, Beet,

* Miss Agnes Clerke ('Familiar Studies in Homer') says that Homer only mentions six flowers, -the poppy, hyacinth, crocus, violet, rose, and white lily. Other plants are named, but not their flowers, and in none of the poems is there any allusion to the perfume either of flower or fruit.

Lichen, Lichen, Polyanthus, and many others. Most of these names are identical, but some are so disguised that it is sometimes difficult at first sight to recognize them. It is easy to see Mandragoras in Mandrake, and Amygdala in Almond; but it is harder to trace the pedigree of Daffodil to Asphodelus, and of 'dates' to Dactylis.

After the death of Theophrastus, a gap of more than 300 years severs us from the next writers, who link our present plant names to the old names of the Greeks and Romans. There may have been books on plants which have been lost, and there are abundant references to trees and plants in almost every author of note; but the only existing work which can claim to be ranked among gardening books before the time of Pliny is the Georgics, where some of the plants named are well, though very shortly, described, and it is clear that Virgil was a plant lover; in no sense, however, can the Georgics be described as a scientific treatise. In the first century after Christ, however, two authors appeared, who have left an indelible mark on botanical science, Pliny and Dioscorides. They were so nearly contemporaries that attempts have been made to prove that Pliny copied from Dioscorides or Dioscorides from Pliny, but the opinion of the best critics is that they wrote quite independently; and though their works contain much in common, they are quite distinct, and written with very different objects. Pliny's 'History of Plants' was merely a part of an Universal Natural History, but of that it occupies a large part, seventeen books out of the thirty-seven. It is impossible to estimate the effect which this work had on all natural history for many hundred years. Pliny's statements were accepted without doubt; and the more wonderful they were, the more readily were they copied by one writer after another. Though the history is full of mistakes and impossible legends, it contains a vast amount of information which but for him would have been lost. He seems to have read diligently all that had been written about plants, and to have been very careful to find their native countries, and some of the descriptions are excellent. Of course, the plants are described by him in the only way they could be described in those days; a littleknown plant was described by indicating the points in which it was like a well-known plant. Centuries were to pass before botanists gradually arrived at the modern system of describing a plant as it is in itself, and not by comparison with others. Even now the plan is not altogether extinct; we have remains of it in such specific names as helleborifolia, crithmifolia, plantaginea, &c., and in such generic names as cotoneaster, pinaster, oleaster, oleaster, &c., in which the final 'ster' is said to stand for instar ; and among English names we have the Parsley fern, the Holly fern, &c. When Natural History, in common with many other sciences, was beginning to be studied in England, Pliny's Natural History' was translated by Philemon Holland in 1601, and probably by this translation he did as much to popularize natural science as any ny writer of his day. It became the great storehouse of facts from which all writers drew, and there can be little doubt that Shakespeare knew it well. It is really more a paraphrase than a translation, and it shows that command of language and rhythm which seems to be the natural inheritance of writers of that day.

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How many names of plants Pliny added to botanical science we cannot exactly say, but the number is very large. was chiefly through him that the Greek names of Theophrastus were Latinized and so got a firm footing. Many also of his names have passed into English, of which one curious example will suffice. Stavesacre looks a thoroughly English word, and when written, as it generally was in the old books, Staves Acre, it resembles an old English field name; but it is merely Pliny's Staphis agria, or wild raisin. In the form Stavesacre it was applied to a plant (Delphinium staphisagria) supposed to be good for skin diseases, but it has passed out of use, and the name is seldom heard.

With Pliny we join Dioscorides, to whom we owe the greater part of our modern Latin names which are derived from the Greek and Latin writers. The influence that he had on botany was far beyond that of Theophrastus or Pliny, and it was so because his work was not merely a botanical treatise or history of plants, but it was strictly confined to plants which were connected with medicine, and spoke only of their medical qualities; it was a Materia Medica, περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς.

After Dioscorides there is a long gap before we come to anything that can be said to have had an influence on botanical nomenclature in England. But there are many works extant which show that the knowledge of plant names was well maintained. The Glossaries, for instance, from the seventh to the fifteenth century are full of plant names; but of these it will be more convenient to speak when we come to the English plant names; and there are important works which only give the Latin names, and which deserve a short notice. One of these is the 'De Naturis Rerum' of Alexander Neckham. The book is an Universal Natural History, written by a remarkable man, certainly the most scientific Englishman of whom we have any record in the twelfth century. He was born in 1147, and was foster-brother

foster-brother to Richard Cœur de Lion; after being educated at St. Alban's and travelling abroad, he became Abbot of Cirencester and died in 1217. He was a voluminous writer, and might almost be called an elegant writer both of Latin prose and verse; but his best work is the 'De Naturis Rerum,' a great portion of which reappears in his poem, 'De Laudibus Divinæ Sapientiæ.' The book was published in 1863 in the Rolls Series, and is the most interesting account we have of the state of Natural Science in the twelfth century. Many of his descriptions are taken direct from Pliny and Dioscorides, but mixed with these there is a large amount of original observation and personal anecdote. As far as plant names go, the chief interest of the book lies in their being almost without exception the same names that are now in use for the same plants. Of the other mediæval works, one is the 'Sinonoma Bartolomei,' written apparently in 1387 by John Mirfeld or Marfelde, and published in the Anecdota Oxoniensia' in 1882, under the able editorship of Mr. Mowat, of Pembroke College; it is a general glossary, but contains a large number of plant names. A medico-botanical glossary of the latter part of the fifteenth century was published by the same editor in the 'Anecdota Oxoniensia,' in 1887, under the name of 'Alphita,' and contains a very large number of plant names, chiefly taken from the Schola Salernitana.' Though none of these three books exercised any great influence on the scientific nomenclature of plants, they show its then existing state, and prove that the accepted names were closely followed, and handed on from one century to another. On this account they deserve a notice in the history of English plant names.

In the great literary and scientific revival that took place in the sixteenth century, botany made a fresh departure. The discovery of America had brought a vast number of new plants to Europe, and their study doubtless stimulated the more complete study of those of the Old World. The great commercial activity of the century must also have had its influence; ships were bringing new products from all parts, and among these plants were not forgotten. But from whatever cause it arose, the great impulse and renewed activity in the discovery and study of plants were quite remarkable. They produced a large body of students, whose labours were unwearied, and a wonderful amount of botanical literature. Among these students were such men as Lonicer, L'Obel, Cæsalpinus, L'Écluse, Mattioli, Caspar and John Bauhin, Conrad Gesner, Pona, Leonard Fuchs, Prosper Alpinus, Dodoens, and many others. And these men were not stay-at-home botanical students; they were great travellers, travellers, whose delight was to collect and examine plants in their native countries. Caspar Bauhin collected them in Germany, France, and Italy with great labour and danger ('quod præcipuum erat, plantas locis natalibus inspiciendo, nullis laboribus, nullis molestiis, nullis sumptibus pepercimus'); L'Écluse collected them in Spain, Hungary, and Bohemia; Du Choul searched Mount Pilatus, and John Pona Mount Baldus; Leonard Rauwolf made a long journey to the East in search of them, and Prosper Alpinus examined those of Egypt.

One result of all this activity was a great amount of botanical literature. The Preface to Caspar Bauhin's 'Pinax' contains an Index Authorum, which gives a very good idea of the books published before his time; and as he made it his special object to study every botanical work, we may feel sure that nothing of importance is omitted. In that Index the titles of more than two hundred books are given, all of which were published between 1540 and 1620. And these books were not merely botanical pamphlets; it was the age of great folios, and at least half of the books named were such. It was also the age of illustrations, and in many of the grand folios the figures of the plants are excellent.

In England, at the same time, the same activity prevailed. In 1527 appeared The Grete Herbale, whiche geveth parfyt knowledge and understandyng of all maner of hearbes.' It was a book of great pretension-- This noble worke is compyled, composed, and auctorysed by dyvers and many noble doctours, and expert maysters in medycynes'; but it is a book of no value, entirely medical, with many very coarse plates, and quite deserves Turner's account of it: 'al ful of unlearned cacographees, and falselye naming of herbes.' In 1538 appeared Turner's 'Libellus de Re Herbaria novus,' followed in 1548 by 'The Names of Herbes in Greke, Latin, Englishe, Duche and Frenche, wyth the commune Names that Herbaries and Apotecaries use,' and in 1551 by his 'New Herball,' and these three works mark a very decided advance of botanical science in England. Then in 1596 came Gerard's 'Great Herball,' a book chiefly taken from L'Obel, with the plates from Tabernæmontanus; but, though full of mistakes, it was a great advance in English Botany, and when 'very inuch enlarged and amended by Thomas Johnson, Citizen and Apothecarye of London,' in 1636, it became a standard work, and has continued a favourite to the present day.

But this great activity in research, with the abundance of books produced by it, led to a confusion of plant names, which every year became worse and worse.

Each collector and each

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