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CHAPTER II. 

 UNSYSTEMATIC KNOWLEDGE OF PLANTS. 



A STEP was made towards the formation of the 

 Science of Plants, although undoubtedly a 

 slight one, as soon as men began to collect infor- 

 mation concerning them and their properties, from 

 a love and reverence for knowledge, independent of 

 the passion for the marvellous and the impulse of 

 practical utility. This step was very early made. 

 The "wisdom" of Solomon, and the admiration 

 which was bestowed upon it, prove, even at that 

 period, such a working of the speculative faculty : 

 and we are told, that among other evidences of his 

 being "wiser than all men," "he spake of trees, 

 from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon even unto the 

 hyssop that springeth out of the wall 1 ." The father 

 of history, Herodotus, shows us that a taste for na- 

 tural history had, in his time, found a place in the 

 minds of the Greeks. In speaking of the luxuriant 

 vegetation of the Babylonian plain 2 , he is so far 

 from desiring to astonish merely, that he says, " the 

 blades of wheat and barley are full four fingers 

 wide ; but as to the size of the trees which grow 

 from millet and sesame, though I could mention it, 

 I will not ; knowing well that those who have not 

 been in that country will hardly believe what I 

 1 1 Kings iv. 33. 2 Herod, i. 193. 



