XC1V INTRODUCTION. 



in these our Lists, must have been a slow 

 and gradual work. Names are given to ob- 

 jects when those objects arrest and fix the 

 attention of man ; and he could not notice 

 them all at once, or in a short time. 



The first names were as vague as the 

 conception which man had of the characters 

 of the plant-world. If any one wants to 

 form a notion of this vagueness, let him 

 talk . of plants with some communicative 

 rustic when he falls in with such on his 

 rambles. 



There is a plant now known as Verbena, 

 and this word is connected with a term 

 which was sacred among the ancient Ro- 

 mans, who on certain solemn occasions 

 took tufts of green things and called them 

 verbenae, a term which Servius on Virgil 

 explains as derived ex viriditate, from their 

 verdure. Professor Max Miiller even 

 supposes it possible that this verbenae may 

 be of the same root as brahman, the mys- 

 terious word of the Hindu religion. Here we 

 have a historical example of a name at first 

 vague and hardly defineable, in course of 

 time appropriated to one particular plant. 



