LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 6l 



totle which has been lost, in which plant organ was discussed in 

 relation to plant organ, and the kinds of plants in relation to other 

 kinds. The prevailing attitude of mind respecting the plant world 

 was not such as would tend to the encouragement of other than 

 utilitarian views of it. That these objects were brought into exist- 

 ence only with reference to man, and for his use and benefit, was 

 even a part of the religious belief. And so deeply seated and 

 generally prevailing was this sentiment that it is said the students 

 of Aristotle and of Theophrastus became objects of ridicule with 

 some of the literaries, poets, satirists of the time, because of their 

 going about the country picking up and curiously peering into 

 the least little things of nature, such as were of no possible use. 

 And one may not attribute to antiquity alone these prejudices 

 against philosophic nature study ; for they rule the mind of untold 

 millions even now. Antiquity, in this phase of it, is with us still, 

 in the ideas of the uncivilized races, and also in rural districts of 

 the lands of the enlightened. Not many a botanical traveller and 

 explorer along the frontiers and in the remoter country sides has 

 failed to be accosted with friendly queries respecting plants of 

 which he has been seen to be making specimens : What use has this 

 plant? What is that kind good for? And what betrays in these 

 good-naturedly inquisitive rustics their complete subjection to the 

 pre-Theophrastan utilitarian botany is, that when the man of 

 science answers frankly that he knows no use whatever for the 

 plants in question, he is not believed, but is silently credited with 

 wishing, for his own pecuniary advantage, to keep their use a 

 secret. The adherents of this archaic philosophy of the vegetable 

 kingdom are, I say, doubtless numbered by thousands on all the 

 continents; people who have not heard of any other; and we have 

 no proof that another had been any more than merely suggested 

 before Theophrastus. 



In the Second Chapter of the philosopher's First Book there is 

 presented the following list of the external and obvious organs of 

 a highly organized plant, i.e., a tree: root, stem, branch, bud, leaf, 

 flower, fruit. ^ I recall that upon first reading these initial chapters 

 of Theophrastan botany I was quite startled to find here this com- 

 plete and faultless statement of the external organs of a tree or 

 shrub; to be confronted with it even here, and be made to realize 

 that it is so very, very old; that our own masters and tutors of a 

 few years ago did not invent it, neither their own immediate 



> Hist., Book i, ch. 2. 



