290 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



Those who attended to the effects of plants, 

 might discover in them some medicinal properties, 

 and might easily imagine more ; and when the love 

 of the marvellous was added to the hope of health, 

 it is easy to believe that men would be very cre- 

 dulous. We need not dwell upon the examples of 

 this. In Pliny's Introduction to that book of his 

 Natural History which treats of the medicinal 

 virtues of plants, he says 6 , " Antiquity was so much 

 struck with the properties of herbs, that it affirmed 

 things incredible. Xanthus, the historian, says, 

 that a man killed by a dragon, will be restored to 

 life by an herb which he calls balin ; and that 

 Thylo, when killed by a dragon, was recovered by 

 the same plant. Democritus asserted, and Theo- 

 phrastus believed, that there was an herb, at the 

 touch of which, the wedge which the woodman had 

 driven into a tree would leap out again. Though we 

 cannot credit these stories, most persons believe that 

 almost anything might be effected by means of 

 herbs, if their virtues were fully known." How far 

 from a reasonable estimate of the reality of such 

 virtues were the persons who entertained this belief, 

 we may judge from the many superstitious observ- 

 ances which they associated with the gathering and 

 using of medicinal plants. Theophrastus speaks 

 of these 7 : "The drug-sellers and the rhizotomists 

 (root-cutters) tell us," he says, " some things which 

 may be true, but other things which are merely 

 6 Lib. xxv. 5. 1 De Plantis, ix. 9. 



