THE STUDY OF PLANTS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. 3 
utilitarian point of view in a manner not essentially different from that of two 
hundred—or even two thousand—years ago, and it may well be a long time 
before they rise above this idea. 
In addition to the botanical knowledge thus initiated by the necessities of life, 
a second avenue leading to the same goal was early established by man’s sense of 
beauty. The first effect of this was limited to the employment of wild flowers 
and foliage for purposes of ornament and decoration. Later on, it led to the 
cultivation of the more showy plants in gardens, and ultimately to the arts of 
gardening and horticulture, which at different periods and in different countries 
have passed through such various phases, corresponding to the standards of the 
beautiful which have prevailed. 
THE DESCRIPTION AND CLASSIFICATION OF PLANTS. 
A third path leading to botanical knowledge springs from the impulse which 
actuates those who are endowed with a keen perception of form to investigate 
structural differences down to their most minute characteristics. Workers in this 
field arrange and classify all distinet forms according to their external resemblances, 
give them names appropriate to their position and importance, catalogue them, and 
keep up the register when once it has been started. Many people possess, in addi- 
tion, the remarkable taste for collecting, which causes them to find pleasure in 
merely accumulating and possessing enormous numbers of specimens of the particu- 
lar objects on which their fancy is fixed. 
This tendency of the human mind has played a very important part in the 
history of botany. The first traces of it can be ascribed with certainty to a period 
long before the commencement of our era; for such descriptions and other notes as 
are contained in the Natural History of Plants, written by Theophrastus about the 
year 300 B.c., are founded, for the most part, on the observations and experiments 
of “Rhizotomoi,” physicians and agriculturists, and it is obvious from the text of the 
book that in some cases those authorities did seek out plants, and learn to distinguish 
them for their own sakes, and not solely for their economic or medicinal value 
At the time of the Roman Empire and in the Middle Ages, it is true, no one 
troubled himself about plants other than those known to be in some way useful. 
But there was a revival of the practice of hunting for plants for the purpose of 
describing and enumerating all distinguishable forms, at that great epoch when the 
nations of the West began to study the treasures of Greek thought, endeavouring 
to adopt the point of view of antiquity, and to harmonize their own circumstances 
with it. It was at this same period that art too shook itself free from the tradi- 
tions of the Middle Ages, and became actuated by a new ideal based on the study 
of the antique; but science, particularly natural science, has as good a claim as 
art to regard that memorable time as its period of renaissance. Although the 
ancient Greek writings on natural history, to which people turned with such 
youthful enthusiasm in the fifteenth century, could not satisfy their thirst for 
