THE WISDOM OF THE EAST 211 



tus, and Dioscorides had already published treatises 

 on plants, and soon afterwards the great " Historia 

 Mundi " of Pliny was written. We still use many 

 of the names these ancient writers gave, though in 

 many cases their descriptions of the plants cannot 

 be followed, and the old names have at times been 

 allotted on a very shallow foundation of probability. 

 When, later on, the Western Empire fell beneath 

 the incursions of barbarous invaders, the Arabic- 

 speaking countries of India, Persia, Arabia, Egypt, 

 and Morocco, were for centuries the home of culture 

 and learning; poetry, mathematics, geometry, art, 

 medicine, astronomy, chemistry, and botany, all 

 being wonderfully developed. 1 Our English word 

 jasmine is but a corruption from the Arabic name of 

 the plant ysmyn. The saffron crocus derives its 

 name from the Arabic zahafran ; the alchemilla, or 

 lady's-mantle, is so called from the Arabic alkemel- 

 yeh, while our beautiful blue chicory flower bears 

 in its name an almost absolute identity with its Arab 



1 To this day many of the fixed stars are still marked on our 

 celestial globes by their Arab names. Thus the seven most 

 conspicuous stars in the constellation of the Great Bear are 

 Dubhe and Merak, the pointers, and Megrez, Phecda, Alioth, 

 Mizar and Alkaid. Elsewhere amidst the starry host of 

 heaven we get Aldebaran, Deneb, and many others. The 

 mathematician of to-day deals with algebra ; the chemist of 

 to-day deals with alcohol and the alkalies. Algebra is the 

 Arab al-jabr, while al-kohl and al-kali are no less purely 

 Arabic words, 



