vi president's address. 



Mr. Ruskin has recently auuouuced himself a botanical 

 teacher. He complains that the scientific names of plants are 

 too numerous, therefore he proposes to abolish them and give 

 new ones. He also complains that the current Englisli names 

 of plants arc, many of them, of the Devil's own contriving, 

 founded on some unclean or debasing association. His new 

 names are pretty, but will, probably, never get beyond the 

 volume that contains them ; but this volume, like others of his 

 works, contains exquisite descriptions of plants ; and if some 

 parts of " Proserpina " are very wild, you will also find, if not 

 science, much that will attract you to Botany, and the deriva- 

 tion of many common botanical terms most happily given. 

 Botanical writers are soundly rated, but that is what may be 

 expected. 



At what period in the world's history does Botany begin ? 

 Pray do not be frightened — I must conclude some time — if I 

 suggest that a practical knowledge of plants, which we may 

 call applied Botany, began at a very early age, in fact earlier 

 than any written history. In the earliest written records 

 preserved to ws man is described as already a tiller of the 

 ground, therefore a grower of cereals, a bread-eater, or, at all 

 events, a cooker of food. He also used the fibres of plants for 

 the manufacture of textile fabrics. These facts indicate a large 

 advance in the arts of civilisation from the conditions that the 

 advocates of the view of the antiquity of man would ascribe to 

 him in his primeval state. He was originally a frugivorous 

 animal, and over large parts of the district commonly supposed 

 to have been the cradle of the human race, the date-palm yields 

 a nourishing fruit that may be obtained without much difficulty 

 or care. Other fi'uits, as the fig, also flourish ; these, therefore, 

 may have been his earliest selection. 



The science of the Greeks originated about 600 b.c. In 

 its earliest periods botanical notices occur. Hippocrates of Cos, 

 the physician, was acquainted with many plants still in use in 

 raedicine. Spices and gums were early prized. Xenophon of 

 Colophaucs was ac(puiinted with the true nature of fossil 



