INTRODUCTION. / 



into the subjects of the vegetable kingdom, or pheno- 

 mena of vegetable life. For although the Greeks 

 had already exhibited the strongest indications of 

 that bold and daring spirit which exalted them ul- 

 timately to such eminence in the ranks of fame, and 

 instigated them to the subjugation of the world ; as 

 well as of that noble talent for intellectual research 

 which they afterwards so signally displayed, 

 they had not yet found, amidst the din and bustle 

 of arms, the leisure necessary to scientific pur- 

 suits. 



But the sacred writings furnish us at least with a A. C. 



i (\/v* 



species of presumptive evidence, imply ing that some- 

 thing of the kind had been instituted in the days of 

 Solomon, who wrote as it appears a treatise on, 

 vegetables ; of the character and object of which, 

 whether botanical or phytological, we can however 

 form only conjecture,, as the work, whatever it 

 might have been, is now irrecoverably lost, although 

 the short account of it that still remains seems to 

 represent it as a sort of natural history of all plants 

 then known.* 



But perhaps we should regard the dawn of phyto- Presuma- 

 logical inquiry as originating in the speculations of O f 6 phy 8 u 

 Thales, the most ancient of the Greek philosophers, logy ' 



and the first that travelled from Greece into Egypt 604. ' 



^* Thalcs. 



* And he spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, 

 even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall. 



1 Kings, iv. 33. 



