4 HEROES OF SCIENCE. 



thoughtful amongst men began to recognize plants 

 by name and to study their uses. Some men were 

 hunters and shepherds, but with them were those 

 who, with gentler spirit, tilled the ground and stored 

 the fruits of the earth. What these were, can be 

 learned from the pictures in Egyptian paintings. 

 The corn of Egypt was wheat and barley, and it is 

 interesting to know that the wheat was of a kind 

 that must have been produced by skilled cultivation. 

 The vine comes early into notice in the Bible, and 

 it had been studied, for wine was made of its fruit. 

 Solomon loved nature, because it brought him into 

 the presence of truth and beauty, and he " spoke of 

 trees from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even 

 unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall." 

 This was part of his wisdom. And the great 

 traveller, Herodotus, shows us that a taste for 

 natural history had, in his time, found a place in the 

 mind of the Greeks — a great race who followed 

 after the first child-like nature-studies of the Chal- 

 deans, Assyrians, and Babylonians had merged 

 into real knowledge. In speaking of the luxuriant 

 vegetation of the plains of Babylon — now dreary 

 wastes — he is so far from desiring to astonish 

 merely, that he says " the blades of wheat and 

 barley are full four fingers wide ; but as to the 

 size of the trees which grow from millet and 

 sesame, though I could mention it I will not, 

 knowing well that those who have not been in that 

 country will hardly believe what I have said 

 already." It is clear that when the Greeks were 



