XXll INTRODUCTION. 



Herbs, Grasses: but this division was of 

 so little value that the Arab physicians 

 abandoned it for the obvious convenience 

 of the alphabetic order. And the very 

 general adoption of this alphabetic order 

 is a confession that any useful arrangement 

 was as yet unknown. The whole vast 

 interval which separates the ancient from 

 the modern botany, that vast period of 

 which the only positive designation that can 

 be assigned is the Period of Synonymy, is 

 to us, now looking back upon it from the 

 modern standpoint, characterised by the 

 want of Arrangement. It is within this 

 great era that our Lists are situated, and 

 they belong to the latter part of it from 

 the eleventh to the fifteenth century. The 

 steps by which ideas of arrangement grew 

 up partially here and there, till they 

 coalesced and gradually ripened into Sys- 

 tem — is that which will now occupy our 

 attention. 



The revival of ancient learning in the 

 fifteenth century told quickly upon bo- 

 tanical studies. The Materia Medica of 

 Dioscorides, though it was the one source 



