2 HISTORY OF BOTANY 



indeed, though I trust with due deference, by the workers 

 of the present also. In a word, I desire to conduct you 

 to the top of a Mount Pisgah, whence you may survey 

 the country through which you have travelled, and also 

 view the promised land of future discovery and possible 

 achievement. 



But I would ask you to remember that what I propose 

 to lay before you is merely an outline and not a detailed 

 picture. When you stand on the top of a lofty mountain, 

 a lake, a river, a village, a wood, may attract your atten- 

 tion in the plains below ; but a boat on the lake, a boulder 

 on the river bank, children playing in the village street, 

 or pine cones on the trees, are inconspicuous or altogether 

 invisible. So when you take a bird's-eye view of the 

 history of a great science your attention is necessarily 

 directed in the first instance to the evolution of broad 

 principles, to the works of the great masters, and trivial 

 details, transient suggestions, and less prominent con- 

 tributions of humbler labourers in the field are likely to 

 remain, at most, blurred shadows on your mind, if indeed 

 they make any impression on it at all. When you come 

 to travel over the country you now view from the heights, 

 it will be your task to study in fuller detail the more 

 intimate features of the landscape now presented to you 

 in broad outline only. 



THE DAWN OF BOTANICAL KNOWLEDGE 



Not long ago I read, in a recently published text-book 

 of botany, a sentence claiming that King Solomon, who 

 flourished, we are told, some three thousand years ago, 

 was the first professor of botany, because he " spake of 

 trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon, even unto 

 the hyssop that springeth out of the wall." It would 

 appear that his majesty was something of a zoologist also, 

 for the ancient chronicler tells us that " he spake also of 

 beasts and of fowl and of creeping things and of fishes." 



