XXVlll INTRODUCTION. 



who can tell 

 The hidden powre of herbes and might of Magick 

 spell ? — Faery Queene i. ii. lo. 



Ignored by the faculty, the Herbal became 

 the guide of the quack ; and in Culpeper's 

 famous Herbal it had become a fit com- 

 panion for the astrological Almanac. This 

 was the dotage of that ancient partnership 

 between Botany and Medicine, which in 

 Dioscorides was young and sound. 



But to return. Of all the Fathers of 

 Botany the most advanced thinker was 

 C^salpinus. He was an enquirer who kept 

 before his mind the aim of the Whole^ 

 as divining that in the Whole would be 

 found the clue to the comprehension of 

 the parts. He sought to comprehend the 

 vegetable kingdom and to form natural 

 classes ; and he grouped some of the more 

 obvious families, as the Leguminosse_, 

 Umbellatse, Liliacese, Compositse, Bora- 

 ginese, Labiatae. He had caught at that 

 idea thrown out by Gesner that the Fruc- 

 tification was the true seat of generic dis- 

 tinctions. Linnaeus said that though this 

 supreme discovery was Gesner's, it was 



