UNSYSTEMATIC KNOWLEDGE. 361 



CHAPTER II. 

 UNSYSTEMATIC KNOWLEDGE OF PLANTS. 



A STEP was made towards the formation of the Science of Plants, 

 L*- although undoubtedly a slight one, as soon as men began to col- 



ect information concerning them and their properties, from a love and 

 reverence for knowledge, independent of the passion for the marvel- 

 lous 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 cedar- 

 tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the 

 wall." l 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, 8 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 Planti* 



1 1 Kings iv. 33. 2 Herod, i. 193. 



