CHAPTER XII 



ecology: the new field botany 



The modern science of Botany, with its exact method, 

 many branches, and most extensive literature, has 

 emerged, " line upon line and precept upon precept," 

 from the early study of plants in a little enlightened age. 

 In those times the medicinal qualities of various species 

 were the chief subject of inquiry, and not a few plants 

 were used in superstitious rituals and endowed with purely 

 imaginary mystic virtues. Although the early herbalists 

 used many plants in concocting elixirs that were more 

 nauseous than efficacious, they nevertheless made some 

 valuable discoveries in the medical line, for which we 

 owe them some gratitude. 



Those early students of plants must have had great 

 difficulty in the identification of species, for there did 

 not then exist any system of classification, and the 

 nomenclature was of a loose and haphazard nature. 

 The same species received different names in different 

 localities, and it often chanced that the name associated 

 with a particular plant in one district was applied to 

 quite a different plant in another. The confusion was 

 great, and gave rise to difficulties and mistakes. A 

 haphazard and traditional mode of plant study, in 

 which there was no scientific method, obtained until 

 the coming of the great Swedish botanist Linnaeus, who 



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