4 INTRODUCTION. 



not be doubted that some considerable progress 

 had been already made in botanical remark, from 

 the necessity of discriminating by some striking 

 and peculiar character such plants as were possessed 



From the of properties convertible to the use of man. 



history" 8 The silence of sacred history, and total Want of 



Greeks a ^ ot ^ ier authentic history, leaves us wholly in the 

 dark with regard to the probable progress of the 

 study of plants from the period last mentioned till 

 that of the exode from Egypt, as well as during a 

 long period of years immediately succeeding; and 

 we are indebted to the earlier histories of the 

 Greeks for the next rays of information on the sub- 

 ject, which though faint and evanescent in their 

 character, present to us the study of plants, at least 

 under a new aspect, approaching nearer to our 

 notions of botanical investigation than any thing 



A.C. that has hitherto occurred. Such are the indica- 

 tions exhibited in the account of the famous expedi- 

 tion of the Argonauts and celebrated story of Jason 

 and Medea, who is represented by the poets as being 

 so deeply skilled in the magic powers and properties 

 of herbs as to enable Jason, by means of her in- 

 structions in the use of them, to perform the other- 

 wise impracticable conditions of obtaining the 

 golden fleece.* But in pursuit of fiction it is very 

 well known that men have often stumbled upon 

 fact; and it is to be presumed they had already 



* Creditus accepit cantatas protinus herbas, 

 Edidicitque usum. Ovid. Met. lib. vii. 98. 



