INTRODUCTION xxxv 



or assurance other less known be sometimes rendered 

 unto us." 



May I here pause for a moment to interject the 

 observation that there are two works yet to be under- 

 taken for English Scholarship and Botany one a com- 

 plete Bibliography Raisonnee, of works on Agriculture 

 of all ages and countries, like that of which Donaldson 

 has compiled an instalment, which, though imperfect 

 and inaccurate, remains the only attempt in English, 

 unless we except Sir Ernest Clarke's hitherto unpub- 

 lished lectures ; and secondly, a comparative Polyglot 

 Dictionary (such as the Syndics of one of our Uni- 

 versity Presses might well superintend) of all Botanical 

 terms from classical times, including Theophrastus, 

 Pliny, Virgil (Martyn's edition of the " Georgics " 

 comes to mind as a valuable contribution), and the 

 writers " De Re Rustica et Hortensi,'^ through the 

 mediaeval and later Herbalists (of whom Dr. J. F. 

 Payne, the distinguished Harveian Librarian, has 

 made such scholarly studies), Parkinson and Hartlib, 

 Ray, Weston, Linnaeus and De Jussieu to our own 

 day. 



Browne's frequent citations from Theophrastus 

 bring afresh to our notice the curious fact that the 

 English language has never possessed a complete 



