él 
herbs of the field ‘‘ in winter’s bleak uncomfortable reign”; we 
have watched him upon the mountain top in seeming innocence, 
band himself with his fellows and plan his destructive raid upon 
earth; we have seen him arm himself with rock and stone and 
begin the attack with resistless force, yet so silently, so stealthily, 
so gently, so secretly, and with so faira face withal that we rejoice 
in his beauty and know not what evil he has worked till he is gone ; 
then do we learn what destruction was being wrought beneath that 
fair outward semblance of purity and grace * * * But the 
sway of the snowflake, as a snowflake, is more restricted than that 
of the rain-drop; he may creep down into the green valleys of 
Switzerland, he may send out his voyaging ice-bergs in northern 
and southern Polar seas, but sooner or later a magician’s wand is 
waved over him, and his beauty is past; he must fling aside his 
fair-seeming disguise, cease his masquerading, and ‘‘ stand confest ” 
as only a raindrop after all. The sun smiles upon him and he is 
gone; the zephyr breathes on him and he fades away, vanishing 
like a fair bright hope that, be it never so fair and bright, melts 
away at last before the breath of Disappointment, and leaves us 
face to face with Truth. 
NEL 
FACTS AND FANCIES IN THE HISTORY OF BOTANY, 
BY 
MR. G. H. NELSON, M.A., F.G.S. 
Read May 7, 1884. 
Botany isso old a science that there must be much that is 
curious in the theories and ‘‘ working hypotheses” by which it has 
advanced to its present state. The scientific botanist of to-day is 
armed with a complete classification founded on research into the 
phenomena of the Vegetable Kingdom, so that on inspection every 
plant can be named and classified with the strictest accuracy. But 
this perfection has not been reached suddenly or soon; it has 
occupied the energies of many generations of nature-lovers. _Theo- 
phrastus, a pupil of Aristotle, in the 4th century, wrote a History 
of Plants, but it is to Dioscorides, of Cilicia, who had studied at 
Alexandria, and as a military physician had botanized in many 
countries, that the title of ‘‘ Father of Botany” belongs. His one 
aim was to compose a treatise which should contain the names in 
every known language of plants serviceable for human ailments, 
their characteristics and localities. Out of his mine all subsequent 
medical botanists dug their art of simpling. He lived about the 
