EARLY BOTANY. 3 



marvellous, the union of poetry with true and false 

 religion, the struggle between the desire for truth 

 and fear of the persecution of the ignorant, and 

 the victory of cultivated observation and reason, 

 all followed, in order, during the history of the 

 progress of every science. A great writer states 

 that it cannot then surprise us that the earliest lore 

 concerning plants, which we discover in the records 

 of the past, consists of mythological legends, 

 marvellous relations, and extraordinary medicinal 

 qualities. To the lively fancy of the Greeks, the 

 narcissus, which bends its head over the stream, 

 was originally a youth who, in such an attitude, 

 became enamoured of his own beauty. The hya- 

 cinth, on whose flower certain markings are to be 

 traced resembling the Greek expression of grief 

 (AIAI), recorded the sorrow of the god Apollo 

 for the death of his favourite Hyacinthus. The 

 beautiful lotus of India, which floats with its 

 splendid flower on the surface of the water, is the 

 chosen seat of the goddess Lackshmi, the daughter 

 of Ocean. In Egypt, the god Osiris swam on a 

 lotus leaf, and the lotus-eaters of Homer lost their 

 love of home immediately. 



These legends and odd fancies, although believed 

 in by the populace of the Eastern nations until a 

 late period in history, were of great antiquity ; and 

 under different names of gods and plants, heroes 

 and flowers had been handed down from the dawn 

 of civilization. Yet this was not all the know- 

 ledge about plants in those early years. The more 



