PREFACE. ' xis 



Malum Persicum, was from Persia ; there is no other 

 name for it but " the Persian apple/' For such as these 

 it was impossible to have any other name ; they were 

 fruit trees foreign to all but their own countrymen. 

 The plum is a better sloe ; can be raised only by graft- 

 ing, for seedlings are found to degenerate; which is 

 also the case with the pear, having its native equivalent 

 in the Pirus domestica, of Bewdley Forest. The syca- 

 more, which has been alleged to prove the Latinism 

 of the Saxons, is merely a maple. Yet the great 

 influence which a Latin education, and scarce any in- 

 struction in old English, has upon ourselves, is trace- 

 able even among the Saxons : the true signification of 

 some native names was passing away, and the plants 

 supposed once to have borne them began to be known 

 by some Roman denomination. For so common a plant 

 as mint, seen in every running ditch, on every watery 

 marge, there seems to be no name but that which is 

 Hellenic, and Latin. The Germanic races, on the con- 

 trary, were the original patrons of hemp ' and flax,^ 

 as against wool. It is, however, with their reach over 

 the material world, and their proficiency in the arts 

 which turn it to mans convenience, after, and not 

 before, their arrival in England, that we are now deal- 

 ing ; and we maintain that a great part of what the 

 Roman could teach, the Saxons, their successors, had 

 learnt. 



The most cursory examination of the work now Book learning, 

 before us will show that we are reading of a civiliza- 

 tion such as the above details would lead us to ex- 

 pect. Here a leech calmly sits down to compose a 

 not unlearned book, treating of many serious diseases, 

 and assigning for them something he hopes will cure 

 them. In the Preface to the first volume it was ad- 



* Vol. I. p. X. note. 



^Feminae saepius lineis amictibus utuntur. Tacitus, Germ. 17. 



