i 4 THE APOTHECARIES' GARDEN 



although the blackberries which grew on the 

 prickly bushes were good eating, the smooth, 

 black berries of the deadly nightshade would kill 

 him although the rabbits nibbled its leaves 

 without hurt. The lower animals had taught 

 him much they had learnt their lesson before 

 him but their teaching was by no means 

 infallible. 



He had to discover that the roots and leaves 

 of wild cabbage were wholesome, but that the 

 roots of the monkshood, close by, would stop 

 his breath that the tempting "fruit, like an 

 orange lying on the thirsty desert sand, which 

 his descendants would some day call " bitter 

 apple," was poisonous, although he had seen 

 the wild rock pigeons peck it, and had found 

 the seed in their crops. 1 He had to learn that 

 he might eat the luscious red berries on the 

 Yew trees, for which the missel-thrushes 

 scrambled in the autumn but not its green 

 seeds or fresh twigs. 



And so the cave man became, of necessity, 

 a field botanist a better one than many a 

 modern Londoner. 



Time went on. The medicine-men made 

 drawings of herbs on clean calf-skins, to show 

 their fellowmen which plants were whole- 

 some and which were poisonous ; and they 

 wrote down on the skins the virtues of healing 

 they believed each herb to possess. 



So the medicine-men became the teachers of 

 botany, and the early descriptions of plants 

 were written by them from the great book of 



1 The writer found seeds of Colocynth in the crop of a Rock 

 Dove shot in South Algeria. 



