104 



NA TURE 



\_Dec. 4, 1879 



Entire skeletons with almost every bone in place show- 

 how tranquilly and thoroughly the remains of the early 

 Tertiary vertebrates were entombed in the mud of the 

 lakes on whose shores and waters they lived. 



A. G. 



CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF PLANTS 



Chronological History of Plants : Man's Record of iu's 

 own Existence illustrated through their Names, Uses, 

 and Companionship. By Charles Pickering, M.D. 

 (Boston : Little, Brown, and Co. ; London : Triibner 

 and Co., 1879.) 



THIS is an extraordinary boo':, difficult alike to 

 characterise and to review. It is a monument of 

 enormous labour and erudition, but it is not easy to dis- 

 cover the plan upon which it is compiled, and it certainly 

 does not fulfil the promise of its title. A " chronological 

 history of plants " would be an interesting and valuable 

 work, if understood to mean a history of the ages and 

 countries in which particular plants have been introduced 

 from abroad, or those of home growth first adapted to the 

 use of man. This, indeed, is the work which Dr. Picker- 

 ing seems to have contemplated ; it is not, however, the 

 work which he has accomplished. 



Neither the historian, the philologist, nor the botanist 

 will be satisfied with the huge volume now presented to 

 them. Dates are given with a show of minute accuracy 

 which the materials for ascertaining them unfortunately 

 do not justify. Thus, to go no further than the second 

 page, we find the mysterious paragraph, " Second genera- 

 tion, September 1st, 4234, among living men." As 

 .similar entries occur on the following page, with the names 

 of Enoch, had, and other descendants of Cain attached 

 to them, I suppose the paragraph must be interpreted to 

 mean th.»t the second generation of living men first saw 

 light on the 1st of September, B.C. 4234. How Dr. 

 Pickerir > 'new this I cannot imagine. If we turn over a 

 few leaves \\ e find the dates of the early Egyptian kings 

 set down with equal minuteness, and, it must be added, 

 with an equally small show of reason. Dr. Pickering even 

 knows the exact dates of the antediluvian monarchs of 

 Babylonia, though he has forgotten the right name of the 

 tovrn of Pantibibla, from which several of them were said 

 to have come. His knowledge of the heroic age of Greece 

 is equally precise. Thus he tells us that in 1290 B.C. Jasus 

 was "succeeded by Crotopus, son of Agenor, and now 

 ninth King of Argos ; " and then follows some inte- 

 resting information about the Pelasgians and their 

 wander 



Dr. Pickering's philology is not less remarkable than 

 his chronology. He shocks the Hebrew scholar by calling 

 icon (" sheep ") tzan, of which, by the way, he says that 

 it was " regarded even by DicKarchus as probably the 

 first animal domesticated "—a statement likely to be dis- 

 puted by those who have occupied themselves with the 

 history of the domestication of animals. Under the ye ir 

 1720 B.C., he remarks that "the northern language from 

 which certain Greek words were taken probably at this 

 time in existence" — a statement which will be new to 

 moa philologists and Greek scholars. Naturally he has 

 never heard of the explanation of the word foxglove, 



which makes it a popular corruption of folic 1 s-gleed, or 

 "row of bells." 



But it is the botanist who has most reason to complain 

 of Dr. Pickering's work. Instead of a "chronological 

 history of plants," he finds the names and notices of 

 various specimens of the vegetable world catalogued in 

 the most arbitrary way under dates which have little or 

 no connection with the age in which they were fira known 

 or used by man. So far as the earlier half of the book is 

 concerned, the notices might in most instances have been 

 as well entered on another page as that on which they 

 are actually found. Why, for instance, should the Arte- 

 misia absinthium or the Iris sambucina be described 

 under the date 1734 B.C., and what possible connection 

 can there be between 1203 B.c and the Phragmitcs com- 

 munis ? The only relation that can generally be traced 

 between the dates and the plants recorded under them is 

 little better than a pun. Because the almond or lus, 

 which Dr. Pickering calls te, is mentioned in Genesis 

 xxx. 37, it is recorded under the year 1506 B.C., the year 

 in which Joseph was "born to Jacob and Rachel;" be- 

 cause a brick from the small pyramid of Dashur was 

 discovered to contain the straw of the jointed charlock and 

 field-pea, an account of these plants is given under the 

 year 2079 B.C., the assumed date of the building of the 

 pyramid ; and the mention of " Pelasgus establishing 

 himself as king in Arcadia" in 1354 B.C. calls up a 

 description of the Qnereus csculiis. As a set-off against 

 this learned trifling, a vast quantity of matter is intro- 

 duced which has nothing to do with plants and their 

 history. Thus it would be quite intelligible if the author 

 had given a list of those Egyptian hieroglyphics which 

 represent plants, but the long, though imperfect, catalogue 

 of hieroglyphic characters of all kinds which he actually 

 has given, though fitted for a treatise on Egyptian gram- 

 mar, is certainly out of place in a history of the vegetable 

 world. 



There is only one explanation that can be offered for 

 the character of this extraordinary volume. Dr. Pi 

 ing was an able and learned scholar, trained in scientific 

 methods and capable, as is proved by his " Races of 

 Man," of producing good scientific work. But his 

 "Chronological History of Plants" has been published 

 since his death, and has consequently not had the benefit 

 of his own compilation and revision. It consists simply 

 of the notes he collected during a long course of volu- 

 minous reading, arranged, not upon any scientific plan, 

 but under the convenient headings of his common-place 

 book. The student may possibly construct a chronologi- 

 cal history of plants out of them, but such a history does 

 not exist at present. The volume is a mine of materials 

 which, thanks to a careful index, can be easily used, 

 though considerable caution is required in doing so. As 

 it stands, however, it is hardly better than a mass of 

 undigested and ill-arranged facts, mixed up with dites 

 and statements calculated to send a shudder through the 

 sensitive frame of the critical historian. Posthumous 

 works are not unfrequently the most cruel injury that can 

 be inflicted by friends upon the memory of the dead, and 

 it is hardly likely that Dr. Pickering would have relished 

 the appearance of his elaborate notes in precisely their 

 present form. 



A. H. Savce 



