THE DAWN OF BOTANICAL KNOWLEDGE 9 



term " fruit " is applied to every structure that encloses 

 seeds, and for the enclosing wall he coins the word " peri- 

 carp/' a term still in use. 



Many of you no doubt believe that the subscience 

 Ecology was founded by Warming and Schimper only a 

 few years ago, but you may read in the Enquiry accounts 

 of woodland, marsh, lake, river, and other plant associa- 

 tions, with lists of plants most likely to be met with in 

 each of these localities. The agriculturist and the horti- 

 culturist, as well as the pharmacist, will find in the 

 Enquiry much that they ought to be acquainted with; 

 thus a whole book is devoted to an account of the timbers 

 of various trees and their uses. One curious notion was 

 prevalent among the farmers of his day, viz. the belief 

 that in certain circumstances one kind of grain could turn 

 into another, but Theophrastus will have none of that. 

 " Some say that wheat has been known to be produced 

 from barley, and barley from wheat, or again both growing 

 on the same stool ; but these accounts should be taken 

 as fabulous." 



I hope I have now said enough to convince you that no 

 one has a greater claim to the title of the " Father of 

 botany " than Theophrastus of Eresus, in spite of the 

 contemptuous treatment he receives at the hands of the 

 German historian. After the famous Greek had been 

 laid to rest among the plants he loved so well and studied 

 so carefully, not a single pure botanist appears for more 

 than eighteen centuries. There were, it is true, writers 

 on agriculture like Cato, Varro, and Vergil, who flourished 

 during the two centuries after the death of Theophrastus, 

 and on materia medica like Dioscorides and Galen, but 

 none of these men were really botanists as we understand 

 the term. They dealt with the cultivation of plants as 

 articles of food or as components of a pharmacopoeia, 

 not as living organisms worthy of study for their own 

 sakes. 



Dioscorides, who flourished about A.D. 64, was a widely 



