Clje CiiiuibtHn portitiiltiirist 



VOL. II.J MAY, 1879. [No. 5. 



ON THE STUDY OF BOTANY. 



BY GEORGP: mill, WARWICK, ONT. 



Ill every part of the \vorld mankind depend on fruit trees or the 

 lierbs of the Held for subsistence to a considerable extent. Plants fur- 

 nish us with a large part of our clothing, and the principal ingredients 

 of our materia r/iedica. Architecture, the mechanical arts, navigation, 

 antl almost every branch of industry depend either directly or indirectly 

 on the products of the vegetable kingdom. 



As might be supposed, plants, shrubs and trees have been studied by 

 men of intelligence and observation from the earliest times to the 

 present day. In the Holy Scriptures we are told that Solomon "spake 

 of trees, from the cedar tree tliat is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop 

 tliat springeth out of the wall ;" and " a greater than Solomon" 

 exhorted His followers to " consider the lilies of the field, how they 

 grow." 



Among the ancient Greeks we find that Hippocrates, about the year 

 B.C. 409, introduced an enlightened system of medical study, connected 

 with the study of plants. Aristotle, about B. C. 350, wrote a learned 

 work on plants ; and his disciple, Tlieophrastus, about B. C. 300, 

 wrote on the same subject, and described nearly 500 species. The 

 principal botanical writers among the Eoinans are Pliny the Elder, 

 and Dioscorides, who both flourished towards the end of the first cen- 

 tury of the Christian era. In the mateHa medica of Dioscorides about 

 700 plants are described, and the greater part of our old English herba- 

 lists are made up from iiis waitings. 



From the time of Pliny the Elder and Dioscorides to the end of the 

 fifteenth century we can say nothing on the state of botany, as history- 

 is almost silent on that subject. At the beginning of the sixteenth 

 f'f'Titnrv Brunsfelsius, a German, ])ubli^]ipcl n work called HistoHa 



