XXIV INTRODUCTION. 



merely survive in a lower, after they have elsewhere 

 become obsolete. We can scarcely read without a smile of 

 scorn the meaning of such names as Fumitory, Devil's bit, 

 Consound, and Celandine ; but it is to men of great 

 celebrity in their day, to Greek and Latin writers, such as 

 Theophrastus, Aristotle, Dioscorides, and Pliny, to Arabian 

 physicians, the most accomplished men of their time, and 

 to the authors and translators of our early herbals, that 

 we are indebted for nearly all such names as these. "We 

 are not to criticize them, or attempt to explain them away, 

 but honestly to trace them back to their origin, and in 

 doing so to bear in mind, for our own humiliation, that 

 those who have betrayed such astonishing ignorance and 

 superstition, passed in their day for philosophers and men 

 of letters. 



