14 INTRODUCTION. 



Dioscori- vantage; the work of the latter on that subject 

 Pliny. being rather detatched histories of some of the most 

 curious and singular plants then known, intermixed 

 with a great deal of loose and vague report, than 

 any thing like scientific inquiry ;-> in which, how- 

 ever, we have the only remaining traces of the bo- 

 tanical knowledge of the Druids, the ancient priests 

 and rulers of Gaul and Britain, who were acquaint- 

 ed with the medical virtues of a variety of plants, 

 but particularly of the missletoe of the oak, which 

 they revered as sacred ; and the work of the former 

 being rather a body of materia medica than of botany $ 

 so that the sarcasm of Rousseau in which he has com- 

 plimented the author with the title of " a great 

 compiler of receipts," has perhaps as much of truth 

 in it as of wit. 



Its fate But their example, which was indeed truly lau* 

 d " r ^ n a ^* s e dable, seems to have been as much neglected among 

 the Romans as that of Theophrastus was among the 

 Greeks ; and as the study of botany originated, so it 

 perished with them in Italy, and lay like all other 

 departments of science buried in the ignorance Or 

 barbarism of the dark ages, except in as far as it 

 might be cultivated by a few Asiatic Greeks or 

 Arabians, among whom the names of Galen and 

 Avicenna stand pre-eminent, till the period of the 

 revival of learning in Europe. 



And revi- At this memorable epocha, which we may fix at 

 the revival about the beginning of the fifteenth century, the 

 of letters. stuc jy o f p] an ts began again to engage the attention 



