220 HISTORY OP BOTANY. 



whose seed was m itself; after his kind ; and God saw that it wna 

 goody After this, it is recorded that God gave to Adam every herb 

 and every tree bearing fruit; the latter was for him exclusively, but 

 to the beasts of the earth, and the fowls of the air, and to every thing 

 wherein there is life, he also gave the greeji herb for meat. 



It is recorded that Adam gave names to all the beasts of the field, 

 and the fowls of the air; and Milton imagines, that to Eve was as- 

 signed the pleasant task of giving names to flowers, and numbering 

 the tribes of plants. When our first parents, as a punishment for 

 their disobedience, are about to leave their delightful Eden, Eve, in 

 the language of the poet, with bitter regret, exclaims: 



" Must I thus leave thee, Paradise 7 * ♦ 



♦ * * * * Oh flowers 

 That never will in other climate grow, 



* * which I bred up with tender hand, 

 From the first opening bud, and gave ye names ; 

 Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank 

 YmirtribeaT' 



The Bible, and the poems of Homer, afford us the only vestiges of 

 the botanical knowledge of the earliest ages of the world. Great ad- 

 vantages were afforded to the Jews for obtaining a knowledge of 

 plants, in their long wanderings over the face of the earth, before 

 they settled in Judea. When in possession of this fertile country ', 

 they extended their intercourse with foreign nations ; the vessels of 

 Solomon frequented the shores of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and 

 the East Indian islands. In the Book of Kings it is said, " God gave 

 Solomon wisdom and understanding above all the children of the 

 East country, and all the wisdom of Egypt, for he was wiser than 

 all men. He spake proverbs and songs ; he also spake oftrees^ from 

 the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop, thatspringeth 

 out of the wall ; and people from all countries came to hear his wis- 

 dom." 



The Magi, or " wise men of the East," cultivated the sciences to a 

 great extent; but they kept their discoveries in mysterious conceal- 

 ment, in order the better to tyrannize over the minds of the people. 

 Their researches were in a great measure lost to the world. Greece, 

 however, received from Asia and Egypt the first elements of knowl- 

 edge. 



The philosophers of Greece, too eager to learn nature at one 

 glance, were not satisfied with the slow process of observation and 

 experiment, and to ascend from particular facts to general princi- 

 ples ; but they believed themselves able, by the force of their own 

 genius, to build up systems which would explain all phenomena ; 

 supposing that man had in his mind preconceived ideas of what 

 nature ought to be. This error in the philosophy of the ancients 

 for a lon^ time obstructed the progress of all science ; and it wag 

 not until laying aside this false notion, and admitting that the only 

 sure method of learning nature is to study her works, that the la- 

 bours of philosophers began to be followed by important discoveries 



The greater part of the ancient Greek philosophers asserted, that 

 plants were organized like animals, that they possessed sensible and 

 rational souls capable of desires and fears, pleasure and pain. Py- 

 thagoras of Samos, who travelled in Egypt, and was there instruct- 

 ed by the priests of the goddess Isis, is said by Pliny to have been 



Milton imagines that Eve gave names to the plants, and numbered their tribes— 

 What is known of the progress of botany during the earliest ages of the world— Solo- 

 mon is said to have spoken of trees and other plants— The Magi— Philosophers (X. 

 Greece-Pythagoras. 



