I860.] CHAPTERS ON BRITISH BOTANY. 21 



A subject which has caused much controversy in modern 

 times_, viz. the transmutation of species, was not unnoticed by 

 the earliest botanists. Theophrastus devotes much labour to the 

 question about the degeneration of trees and herbs, — of the 

 change of one species into another, as, for example, of Sisymbrium 

 into Mint, — of wheat into rye, 7ri;/309 et9 aipav. These changes 

 are alleged, not on his own authority, or as the result of his ex- 

 perience, but as hear-says, and he is in the habit of qualifying 

 his statements with the hypothetic phrase etTrep fytverat, if it be 

 so. Barley, he says, will be converted into wheat during the 

 process of growth, if only stripped of its integument or husk, 

 iTTCcrOeicrOaL. 



He complains that there were peas in his time that never 

 could be "boiled soft,^' unless they were steeped the previous 

 night in an alkaline solution; /Spe^avra ■)(e\evov(7iv ev VLTprn 



VVKTt. 



Annual and perennial plants are distinguished, and also the 

 difference between herbaceous and half-shrubby kinds. 



External form is often well-defined in the 'History of Plants/ 

 for example, the various characters of roots, as the fleshy, the 

 tuberous, the fibrous, the woody, the creeping, etc. ; also the ha- 

 bit of stems, the situation of branches, the forms of leaves, fruits 

 and seeds, evergreen and deciduous trees and shrubs. He de- 

 scribes the winged or compound leaf as irrepvya, a term equiva- 

 lent to Linnseus^s term pinnatum. 



Besides the number and position of the external organs, he 

 knew and described the internal structure, viz. the cells, tissues, 

 and sap. 



The economical uses, and the mode of cultivating the useful 

 plants, occupy a large portion of his work. In his time, the vine, 

 the olive, the fig, the apple, and the pear, were the most impor- 

 tant fruits of Greece. In addition to these, he describes many 

 other fruit-trees which were not the natural produce of his coun- 

 try, viz. the pomegranate, plum, peach, etc. 



Like Pliny, he gives lists of plants useful for garlands ; among 

 these he assigns the first rank to the rose, the lily, the narcissus, 

 the crocus, oenanthe (not our umbelliferous^ osnanth). Among 

 fragrant flbwers, the violet and the phlox (pink ?) occupy the chief 

 place. 



In treating of the duration of leaves, or of the deciduous and 



