VU1 INTRODUCTION. 



belong. They have probably been nearly all of them 

 preserved to us in ancient manuscripts ; but it is difficult 

 to ascertain what were the several plants that were meant 

 by them. Indeed it is not likely that in earlier times any 

 great number of our indigenous species had been carefully 

 distinguished. It is only when nations have arrived at a 

 high state of culture, that they are curious about objects of 

 Natural History, as such, or have special names for any 

 but a few of the more conspicuously useful, beautiful, or 

 troublesome of them. Our fruit and timber trees, the 

 cereal grains, and several potherbs and medicinal plants, 

 have the same at the present day as they bore a thousand 

 years ago ; but by far the greater number of our other 

 species have only such as have been given to them 

 within the last three hundred years. These, for the most 

 part, were introduced from abroad; for in the accurate 

 study of living plants the continental nations took the 

 lead, and our own early herbalists did little more than 

 ascertain which they meant, and apply their names to our 

 own. 



In the selection of these the father of English Botany, 

 Dr. "William Turner, set his successors a laudable example 

 by keeping as closely as possible to the Flemish and 

 German, as languages more akin to our mother-tongue, 

 and intelligible to the uneducated, than Greek and Latin. 

 Lyte in his excellent translation of Dodoens did the same, 

 and was worthily followed by Gerarde, and by Parkinson. 

 The works of later herbalists are little else than transcripts 



