358 HISTORY OF BOTAXY. 



CHAPTER I. 

 IMAGINARY KNOWLEDGE OF PLANTS. 



THE apprehension of su^h differences and resemblances as those by 

 which we group together and discriminate the various kinds of 

 plants and animals, and the appropriation of words to mark and con- 

 vey the resulting notions, must be presupposed, as essential to the 

 very beginning of human knowledge. In whatever manner we ima- 

 gine man to be placed on the earth by his Creator, these processes 

 must be conceived to be, as our Scriptures represent them, contempo- 

 raneous with the first exertion of reason, and the first use of speech. 

 If we were to indulge ourselves in framing a hypothetical account of 

 the origin of language, we should probably assume as the first-formed 

 words, those which depend on the visible likeness or unlikeness of 

 objects ; and should arrange as of subsequent formation, those terms 

 which imply, in the mind, acts of wider combination and higher 

 abstraction. At any rate, it is certain that the names of the kinds of 

 vegetables and animals are very abundant even in the most uncivilized 

 stages of man's career. Thus we are informed 1 that the inhabitants 

 of New Zealand have a distinct name of every tree and plant in their 

 island, of which there are six or seven hundred or more different 

 kinds. In the accounts of the rudest tribes, in the earliest legends, 

 poetry, and literature of nations, pines and oaks, roses and violets, the 

 olive and the vine, and the thousand other productions of the earth, 

 have a place, and are spoken of in a manner which assumes, that in 

 such kinds of natural objects, permanent and infallible distinctions 

 had been observed and universally recognized. 



For a long period, it was not suspected that any ambiguity or con- 

 fusion could arise from the use of such terms ; and when such incon- 

 veniences did occur, (as even in early times they did,) men were far 

 from divining that the proper remedy was the construction of a 

 science of classification. The loose and insecure terms of the lan- 

 guage of common life retained their place in botany, long after their 



1 Yate's New Zealand, p. 238. 



