VI PREFACE 



believed ; and I was almost wearied, when Pro- 

 fessor Price told me of the interesting manu- 

 script at Pembroke College, the Breviarium 

 Bartolomsei, by which my flagging interest 

 was revived. But this fourteenth-century 

 manuscript procured me what was still more 

 valuable than itself, namely, the kind aid of 

 J. L. G. Mowat, Esq., Fellow of Pembroke 

 College, whose great knowledge of Plant - 

 names enabled him to give me substantial 

 help and many an ingenious suggestion. The 

 occasional acknowledgments in the Notes are 

 but an imperfect record of my debt to Mr. 

 Mowat. 



The fascination of Plant -names has its foun- 

 dation in two instincts, love of Nature and 

 curiosity about Language. Plant-names are 

 often of the highest antiquity, and more or 

 less common to the whole stream of related 

 nations. Could we penetrate to the original 

 suggestive idea that called forth the name, it 

 would bring valuable information about the 

 first openings of the human mind towards 

 Nature; and the merest dream of such a 

 discovery invests with a strange charm the 

 words that could tell, if we could understand, 

 so much of the forgotten infancy of the human 



