1859.] CHAPTERS ON BRITISH BOTANY. 203 



It is possible that these learned men may have been misled by 

 the analogy, if not affinity, that exists between the Celtic and the 

 Greek languages. In Greek, ApG? is an Oak; hence we have 

 Druids, the ancient priests of Gaul and Britain, who, if they did 

 not live in woods, practised their religious rites in groves ; and 

 as the Oak is the most common tree in these islands, they may 

 have had their name from the places where they resided, or where 

 their rites were performed. 



In the Cambro-British language, Deri^^e^i is an Oak, and Der- 

 wydd is a Druid. The Greek ApO? and the Welsh Deriven are 

 evidently from the same root. 



These ancient priests had a respectable share of knov/ledge 

 for the times in which they lived, and it still exists, or at least a 

 a portion of it is said to have been handed down to us in the 

 Welsh Triads and other remnants of Druidical or Bardic lore. 

 The Bards succeeded the Druids, and transmitted part of their 

 learning to modern times. It is in these songs of the Bards that 

 we may look for the scanty gleanings of botanical knowledge 

 that are still extant. 



Here it is to be lamented by antiquaries that the sacri vates, 

 i. e. the Bards, were not botanists, and also that the botanists 

 were not bards ; hence much of the ancient knowledge of Nature 

 has perished. The rhizotomists, as the Greeks called the simplers 

 of their times, could have given much interesting information 

 about the herbs with which they were familiar, but they could 

 not convey what they knew in phraseology so acceptable to their 

 countrymen as Theophrastus, Aristotle, and Plato could. Many 

 great men lived before Agamemnon, but their deeds are unknown 

 because they had no sacer vates, no one gifted with the. divine 

 art, to transmit their names and labours to posterity. 



Celtic or Druidical or ancient British botany can only be a 

 meagre subject; but an account of the progress of botanical 

 science in Britain would be incomplete without this portion, 

 however meagre. It may be assumed that the Druids knew the 

 Oak, the chief tree in the groves wherein the rites of their reli- 

 gion were celebrated; they also knew the Mistletoe, a plant 

 which they regarded with a superstitious veneration, especially 

 if it grew on the Oak. 



Several naturalists, among which De Candolle and Sprengel 

 may be named, assert that Loranthus europceus is the plant whicli 



