INTRODUCTION. 



war an art of such superlative importance that the 

 acquisition of it was deemed an object worthy of 

 the greatest heroes. And hence we find that the 

 medical virtues of herbs had formed part of the 

 study even of Achilles himself.* 

 A. CL At this memorable period we have also farther 



1 183 



evidence of the progress of botanical knowledge 

 beyond any thing hitherto adduced. For it appears 

 that plants were now studied or cultivated not 

 merely as furnishing the necessaries, comforts, and 

 luxuries of the table, or as useful in medicine and 

 the arts, but also under an aspect altogether un- 

 precedented ; namely, as being ornamental in gar- 

 dening if I am not inferring rather too much from 

 Homer's description of the garden of Alcinolis, 

 which at the period of the return of Ulysses, seems 

 to have exhibited a specimen not only of the useful 

 but also of the ornamental;-^ though no traces of 

 ornamental gardening are to be met with in the 

 history of earlier times, unless we suppose with 

 Pliny, that the hanging gardens of Babylon were 

 built by queen Semiramis. In the Odyssey we 

 have also the first account of the celebrated lotus of 

 the ancients -,+ and of the nepenthes famous for its 

 property of dispelling care. || Still we have no direct 

 Evidence of the institutionpf any philosophical inquiry 



* Stat. Achill. ii. 444. 



t *E0* JV Koa-ptrai TTfXtrtctl xeifet ciWov jfg* 



nvT6 7rt<pveur tTTyiTctvcv yctvcaari. Odi/SS. H. 12f. 

 J Odyss. I, y*. I! Ibid. A. 220, 



