OBJECTIONS TO BOTANY. 51 



" The Great Herbal whiclie giveth parfyct knowledge and un- 

 derstandyng of all manner of Herbes & their gracyous vertnes 

 whiche God hathe ordeyned for our prosperous welfare and 

 helth, for they liele and cure all manner of dj^seases & sek- 

 nesses that fall or misfortune to all manner of creatoures of 

 God created, practysed by many expert & wyse masters, as 

 Avicenna, &c., &c., prented by me Peter Traveris, 1516." 

 The title of one printed in London in 1551 is, "A new Herbal 

 wherein the names of herljs in Greke, Latin, Englysh, Dutch, 

 Freuche, and in the Potecaries and Herbaries Latin, with all 

 the properties, degrees, and natural places of the same, 

 gathered and made by William Turner, Physician unto the 

 Duke of Somersettes Grace." Botanic gardens were formerly 

 called physic gardens, and were designed especially for the 

 instruction of physicians, the growth of drugs, and for testing 

 the medicinal properties of new plants. The Roman emper- 

 ors maintained such a garden on the island of Crete, and Mon- 

 tezuma had one at Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest. 

 Medical botany, at the present time, is merely an important 

 branch of the applied science, and one very greatly neglected 

 in this country. Botany, however, is something more than 

 the science of roots and herbs. 



Another common objection against this study is founded 

 upon the fact that the botanical names of plants are in Latin, 

 and the descriptive terms are largely derived from the ancient 

 languages and must be learned by careful application. If the 

 botanist had no other aim than to acquire the names of the 

 one hundred thousand species of the vegetable kingdom it 

 would be a forbidding and unremunerative task ; though it 

 should be remembered that a Latin word is quite as easily 

 retained in memory as an English word that is new. Latin 

 names are, also, much more easily spelled and pronounced 

 than the popular names applied to plants in their native coun- 

 tries, when they have any, but the greater part have none 

 whatever till Latin ones are given them. There are many 

 obvious advantages in botanists of all nations having as they 

 do this one universal language, and the precision of botanical 

 descriptions resulting from an accurate terminology is, more- 

 over, a source of very great pleasure to the student, and 

 renders botany one of the most useful means of mental disci- 



