460 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1720. 



even to this day. The Royal Academy at Paris has been at great pains to find 

 out the virtues of plants by chemical analysis, and several other experiments ; 

 of which we have the abstracts in Tournefort's Histoire des Plantes aux environs 

 de Paris, and Tauvry's Traite des Medicaments : but these laborious endeavours 

 only serve to confirm what the ancients advanced, without any new discovery. 

 For Tournefort, after having made the experiments with the tournesol and blue 

 paper, and given an exact account of the several active chemical principles ob- 

 served in different plants, usually concludes, ainsi il n'est pas surprenant s'il a 

 de telles vertues, therefore it is not surprising if it is endowed with sudi vir- 

 tues; which is nothing but giving a reason why the ancients believed they were 

 good for such a distemper. 



The means used by our ancestors to discover the virtues of plants, and their 

 use in the several diseases, as they were the most simple, so they are most 

 beneficial at this very time. It seems they narrowly considered their external 

 appearance, and concluded, if such a plant partake of such virtues, such an- 

 other so very like to it, must be endowed with the same : for example, apium 

 and faeniculum have the same manner of flowering; both produce their seed 

 after the same manner; their roots are both alike, being long, white, straight, 

 carnous, &c. therefore since a long course of experience, delivered down by 

 tradition, shows, that if such a plant has such virtues, such another like to it 

 must have the same. Thus we find apium, faeniculum, petroselinum, all joined 

 together, and prescribed as the opening roots in the dispensatory. 

 . This induced' that expert botanist and diligent inquirer into the Materia 

 Medica, Dr. Herman,* to lay down these general maxims, quaecunque flore et 

 semine conveniunt easdem possident virtutes : and omnia semina striata sunt 

 carminativa. 



The late ingenious and accurate naturalist, Mr. James Petiver, observes, 

 that the plantas umbelliferae, galeatae, verticillatae, tetrapetalae, siliquosae and 

 siliculosae, have generally a tendency to the same virtue and use. And in a 

 letter to me he observes, that the plantae flore stamineo, which he calls blink 

 flowers ; such as hops, nettles, docks, sorrels, betes, blites, spinage, oraches, 

 bonus henricus, or English mercury, and kali minus album, are all good sallads, 

 raw, or boiled; as also the leguminosae, or pea kind; such as pease, beans, 

 phaseoli, are good nutritive food for men; and the tares, trefoils, medicae, loti, 

 and saintfoins, are good pabulum or fodder for beasts : to these he adds the 

 frumentaceae or cereales ; as the wheat, rye, and oats, in Europe, and the 

 maiz, millet, panic, and sorgum, in the Indies, make good bread ; and that 

 from barley and rice we have good fermented and spirituous liquors. To these 



♦ Professor of botany and niateria medica at Leyden. 



