PREFACE 9 



atic botany, with a nomenclature, families, genera, and species, all 

 their own. So then if, in the search for a possibly early botanical 

 landmark, the writers upon farming, gardening, and medicine are to 

 be passed by without serious consideration, it is not because no 

 traces of genuine botany occur in them; it is because we are in 

 search of him with whom the leading idea is that of a philosophy 

 of plant life and form. The first botanist is the first man who under- 

 takes research upon plants as plants rather than as things useful or 

 deleterious to man and beast; and the first landmark in the his- 

 tory of botany is the earliest book in which plants and plant organs 

 are discussed each in relation to others. If there is any attempt 

 to distinguish and define plant organs, or any suggestions about 

 the probable functions of any of them, any indications of how 

 plants may be distinguished from minerals on the one hand, 

 and from animals on the other, any attempts to correlate 

 plants as like and unlike, and that upon some recognized prin- 

 ciples — in any and all such endeavors, we recognize the acti- 

 vities of a philosophic mind in its attempts to solve problems not 

 economic but scientific. In the author of any such treatise upon 

 plants, however imperfect or even crude his notions may seem to us, 

 we have nevertheless the author to whom belongs the name of 

 botanist, as in the vocabulary of the sciences that name ought to be 

 defined. 



What is here undertaken is not a history of botany. There is 

 no purpose of presenting in chronological succession the long line of 

 the contributors to the upbuilding of this science, w4th an account 

 of the best contributions each has made. That would be the work 

 of a lifetime; indeed, of two lifetimes; for the history of no science 

 can be made out, and presented in its perspective, but by him who 

 first of all has mastered that science itself, in its completeness ; and 

 the domain of botany however philosophically restricted remains 

 vast, insomuch that one lifetime seems requisite to the mastery of 

 it in its several departments. A second lifetime should, then, be 

 given to him who should be required to write its history. And 

 still the presentation of a complete and accurate history of botany 

 would remain impossible. Important data are wanting, and 

 hopelessly so. For one example, more than two millenniums ago 

 a highly philosophic and very extensive treatise upon plants was 

 indited which alone among books of its kind has survived the pass- 

 ing of all the centuries. The author of it cites other authors on 

 the same topic whose books, then extant, are long since lost. This 

 writer had also in early life a very illustrious teacher who instructed 



