32 ■ CHAPTERS ON BRITISH BOTANY. [January, 



evergreen leaf^ we are told that in the island of Elephantina the 

 vine and fig-tree are evergreen. Possibly this phenomenon may- 

 be observable in some mild winters in the south of Europe, even 

 in deciduous trees. 



Many of our current technicalities are used in the ' History of 

 Plants ; ^ for example, in fruits, monocarps, polycarps, pericarps, 

 angiosperms, gymnosperms, etc. 



He appears to have distinguished between monocotyledonous 

 and dicotyledonous plants, and gives examples of both. Genera 

 are also well distinguished, and species, but the latter rather more 

 obscurely than the former. 



His great object appears to have been to give his countrymen a 

 popular history of their cultivated and useful plants ; for although 

 he makes a distinction between wild and reclaimed species, yet 

 both were equally useful. 



The cultivated trees producing food, the wild timber ; the gar- 

 den vegetables were for the table, the wild for fodder and pasture. 

 There is also much information about the means of extracting 

 gums, resins, and oils from plants ; also on their alexipharmic 

 (antidotal) and magical properties. Pliny's great work is stuffed 

 with this learning, as we shall see when the Roman knowledge 

 of botany is under consideration. These properties have been 

 handed down almost to our own times. In these early days now 

 under notice, the properties of hot and cold in the first, second, 

 and third degree, had not been discovered. 



Much of what this history contains was adopted from the po- 

 pular or vulgar opinions, prejudices, and superstitions ; and that 

 the author did not give implicit credence to all that he heard ap- 

 pears from his frequent use of ^aai, " it is said,'' or " the Arca- 

 dians say." 



What he describes from his own observation or from that of 

 others, is reliable ; his notice of the Banyan fig-tree, which had 

 not been long known in these times, is well and graphically given 

 by our author. It is not likely that this tree was known in 

 Greece prior to Alexander the Great's invasion of India. 



There will be occasion for entering into this subject with 

 greater fulness whe^ the specific identity of the plants of Greece 

 and Britain is before us. This will be the subject of the next 

 chapter. 



