X INTRODUCTION. 



found or reputed to exist between particular 

 plants on the one hand and particular parts 

 or affections of the animal frame on the 

 other. Whatever was scientific in the art 

 of medicine was centred in the study of 

 herbs, and the materials of the healing art 

 were wholly vegetable. The mineral and 

 chemical remedies are comparatively mo- 

 dern : in the main they date from the 

 Arabic physicians. This priority of herbal 

 medicines has left its trace in the vocabulary 

 of our language. The terra drug is from 

 the Anglo-Saxon drigan, to dry; and drugs 

 at first were dried herbs. Thus the study 

 of plants was identified with medicine by 

 an inveterate tradition : and when in the 

 sixteenth century with the beginnings of 

 modern Botany the chief cities of Europe 

 established gardens for study, the}'" were 

 called Physic Gardens ; and this name has 

 in Oxford finally yielded to the title of 

 Botanic Garden within my own memory. 



The extant literature of Botany begins 

 with the writings of Theophrastus in the 

 fourth century before our era. The book 

 which his master Aristotle wrote on this 



