THE DAWN OF BOTANICAL KNOWLEDGE 3 



It is much to be regretted that not one sentence of these 

 early discourses on natural history has been preserved, 

 unless we may assume that the fragments of ecological 

 lore in the books of the Old Testament are some of the 

 traditional sayings handed down by the " people who 

 came to hear the wisdom of Solomon." " Can the rush 

 grow up without mire ? Can the flag grow without 

 water/' asked Bildad the Shuhite. " Whilst it is yet 

 in his greenness and not cut down, it withereth before 

 any other herb." " Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and 

 f ro ? " suggests that Job had given some thought to the 

 problems of stress and strain in mechanical tissues that 

 formed the subject of Schwendener's investigations many 

 centuries afterwards. And how does this strike you for 

 a pronouncement in elementary plant physiology ? " For 

 there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will 

 sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not 

 cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, 

 and the stock thereof die in the ground ; yet through the 

 scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a 

 plant." It might almost serve as the text to Alexander 

 Braun's essay on Rejuvenescence, published in 1849 ! 



But the study of practical botany must have begun 

 long before the days of the learned King of Israel ; for 

 in the struggle for existence the problem of food supply 

 is a crucial one, and primitive man was obliged, though 

 perhaps unconsciously, to classify plants into those that 

 were wholesome and those that were injurious. Not very 

 long after the attainment of that elementary knowledge 

 he would add to his stock of information his experiences 

 of plants as stimulants, as sedatives or as curatives. In 

 a word, our prehistoric forefathers must have studied 

 plants both as sources of food and as sources of materia 

 medico, . What was good to eat and what was, not was 

 knowledge that each man had to gain for himself, perhaps 

 from bitter experience, but the circumstances were altered 

 when it came to the selection of the appropriate herb whose 



