INTRODUCTION. 3 



yet it never afforded any distinct light to gardening 

 until the beginning of the present centmy. 



It is undoubtedly tme. that in much earher ages 

 there were suiinises bom of inquiiing minds, that 

 are startlingly in accordance with the results afforded 

 by modern vegetable chemistiy and physiology ; but 

 they were no more than sm'mises ; fortunate guesses 

 that, among many totally erroneous, happened to sa- 

 vour of ti-uth. Thus Pythagoras forbade the use of 

 beans as food, because he thought that they and human 

 flesh were created from the same substances, and 

 modern research has rendered it certain that that 

 pulse has among its constituents more animo-vege- 

 table matter than most other seeds. Empedocles 

 maintained that plants are sexual ; that they possess 

 life and sensation ; and that he remembered when 

 he was a plant himself, previously to being Empe- 

 docles. 



Theophrastus and Pliny wrote more voluminously 

 upon plants, but not ^vith more knowledge of their 

 physiolog}^ ; and little or no improved progress is 

 really visible until the sixteenth centurj^ was well 

 advanced; for this branch of science was no bright 

 exception from the darkness enveloping all human 

 knowledge dming the middle ages, and it was not 

 until that period in which Bacon lived, that the 

 human mind threw off the trammels of the school- 

 men, and instead of arguing as to what must be, 



B '2 



