EARLY BOTANISTS. 2$ 



learned, during fifteen hundred years and more ; 

 they were the text-books of science during what 

 are called the dark or middle ages, and although 

 now out of date, they were the good seeds of 

 knowledge, sown in difficulty, in those early days. 



Aristoteles, Theophrastus, and Plinius were not 

 only botanists, but naturalists in every sense, and the 

 first named is especially celebrated as a student of 

 and writer upon animals ; he was a great zoologist. 

 Theophrastus knew much about geology, and so 

 did Plinius. 



These men, then, brought the science of botany 

 out of its childhood, and saw it partly on its way 

 through its youth ; they had removed it beyond the 

 fanciful ideas and strange notions of the earliest 

 writers on the subject, and had begun to classify 

 plants, and to study the relations of plants to sur- 

 rounding nature, and to the wants of man. Che- 

 mistry and the use of the microscope were unknown, 

 and therefore progress in the necessary direction 

 could not be made at that time of the world. 



It must be remembered that botany does not 

 consist in collecting, drying, and drawing plants 

 alone, but it relates to everything about the 

 vegetable kingdom of nature. The growth of the 

 plant from the seed ; how it lives, breathes, and 

 its sap circulates ; how starch, and sugar, and 

 other products are formed — have to be considered. 

 The manner of unfolding of the flov/cr, the 

 anatomy of its fruits, and of the leaves and stems 

 and root, and the method by which the kind repro- 



