BOTANY 



854 



BOTANY 



SOME MEMBERS OF THE BUTTERCUP FAMILY 



Story of the Growth of Botany. With some 

 sciences it is difficult enough to imagine just 

 how they began, but this is not the case with 

 botany. All about, wherever men lived, there 

 plants lived, too, and so conspicuous were 

 many of them that they could not help attract- 

 ing attention. In the earliest ages, doubtless, 

 this attention was somewhat casual man had 

 done nothing to bring the plants there, and he 

 troubled himself not at all about their growth 

 or development. If they bore berries or fruits 

 which might be eaten, he ate them, and prob- 

 ably until distinctions were established many 

 persons died from eating poisonous fruits. 



As men advanced and came to have a little 

 leisure for other things besides gaining a bare 

 living and fighting off their enemies, they began 

 to take more interest in the things about them, 

 and the plants, apparently useful for many 

 things, drew their attention. There were 

 numerous curious differences in these plants 

 which demanded notice. Some were always 

 green; some spent the winter with bare, dead- 

 locking branches, but came to beautiful life 

 in the spring; some really died, and never 

 became green again with the coming of warm 

 weather. Some bore wonderful flowers, but 

 were good for nothing save to look at, while 

 others, with no flowers to attract attention, had 



luscious fruits, rich nuts, leaf-buds that served 

 as food, or roots that might be made into 

 bread. Gradually there came to the knowledge 

 of men one most important fact that in cer- 

 tain plants there were qualities which made 

 them good for various sicknesses. And it was 

 in the study of these medicine plants that 

 botany really began, physicians being the first 

 botanists. Writers of Greece and Rome occa- 

 sionally produced works on plants, which dealt 

 almost entirely with such as could be used as 

 medicines. 



These students of plant life, who called their 

 slowly-growing science botany, from a Greek 

 word meaning plant, had little thought of a 

 systematic classification of plants, nor could 

 they, with their limited knowledge, have 

 attempted anything like the modern classifica- 

 tions. The Middle Ages saw no advancement 

 in this plant-science, but when, about the six- 

 teenth century, there was a new interest in 

 learning of all sorts, botany came in for its 

 share. Some of the earliest illustrated books 

 were about plants, and many of the old wood- 

 cuts used would be, in point of beauty, a 

 credit to modern books. Still the chief inter- 

 est was in disease-healing plants, and only 

 gradually did the more general phases of the 

 subject make their appeal. Attempts at 



