1859.] CHAPTERS ON BRITISH BOTANY. 131 



great antiquity as some portions of the Old Testament ; and for 

 some names of plants there are no ancient authorities that are 

 earlier than those of the sacred volume. The Druidical or ancient 

 British plants will be the subject of the second chapter. The 

 third chapter will be devoted to the Greek and Latin classical 

 plants. The fourth to the medieval or barbarous period of bo- 

 tanj, etc. etc. 



Or^ to set the matter in another light, or to show the subject 

 under a different phase, the entire series will consist of four 

 parts. The first will embrace the history of British species from 

 the earliest period to about the middle of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, or to the time of How, Merret, Ray, etc. The second, 

 from the last- mentioned period to the introduction of the Lin- 

 nsean system. The third, from about the middle of the last cen- 

 tury to the introduction of the Natural system, as it is called. 

 The fourth, the history of botany from that period to the present 

 time. 



CHAPTER I. 



On the earliest Knowledge of Plants. — Authors of Works on Sacred Botany. — Plants 

 of Holy Scripture. — Thistles, Thorns, Oaks, Mustard, Hyssop. — Newton, West- 

 macott, Sir Thomas Brown, Kauwolf, Belonius, Harris, Bromfield, Lady Cal- 

 cott, etc. 



In the very infancy of society, when the human race formed 

 only one family, and when they all lived together, or not very 

 distant from the spot where man was originally created, botany, 

 or the knowledge of plants as a practical science, was not en- 

 tirely unknown. Both plants and animals were observed and 

 appreciated by Adam and his immediate descendants, before they 

 had occasion to make use of the products of the third or mineral 

 kingdom. That the antediluvian patriarchs soon discovered the 

 use of metallic implements for subjugating some animals and for 

 destroying others, is not only probable, but also an historical 

 fact ; but as at this early period they lived on fruits or roots, or 

 probably on the milk of animals, their attention must necessarily 

 have been called to trees and herbage : the former, as yielding 

 food for themselves ; the latter as affording subsistence to their 

 flocks, in which their wealth chiefly consisted. 



The sacred historian informs us that one of Adam^s sons, Cain, 

 was a tiller of the ground. Husbandry therefore was not en- 

 tirely unknown in the very first age of the world, and in that 



