36 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



So sang the poet Horace Smith, and not less sweetly or truth- 

 fully did the Scotish minstrel, Allan Cunningham, write : 



"There is a lesson in each flower, 

 A story in each stream and bower ; 

 In every herb on which we tread 

 Are written words which, rightly read, 

 Will lead you from earth's fragrant sod 

 To hope, and holiness, and God." 



Viewed even by the critical eye of science, Botany presents 

 many attractions unknown to the other branches of Natural History, 

 and well deserves the appellation of our French cousins, " la belle 

 science." To the history of this most charming of studies I would 

 now call your attention. 



Botany, derived from a Greek word meaning a plant, is the 

 natural history of the vegetable kingdom. In its widest sense it em- 

 braces everything respecting plants — their nature, their kind, the laws 

 which govern them, and the uses to which they may be applied in 

 medicine, chemistry, or the arts in general. As, however, their 

 medical virtues fall most properly under the province of the physician, 

 their chemical properties under that of the chemist, and their vari- 

 ous other qualities, beneficent or otherwise, under different de- 

 partments of the scientific world, it is commonly restricted to a 

 knowledge of the plants themselves^ their mode of growth, their 

 anatomical and physiological phenomena, and those characteristic 

 marks by which the various species may be distinguished from one 

 ■another. It is only within comparatively recent years that, in this 

 sense, the science of botany has been developed, its great misfortune 

 having been that, from its very inception, it was looked upon merely 

 as an adjunct to medicine. This was the reason why our ancestors 

 sought only for heahng virtues in plants, whilst a knowledge of the 

 plants themselves was totally neglected. Botany, as a study, was 

 nothing, and those among the ancients, who prided themselves most 

 on their acquaintance with plants, had no idea of their structure or 

 the relation borne by one class to another. They knew, perhaps, 

 by sight a few of the plants of their own neighborhood, to which they 

 gave names at random, and to which they attributed wonderful 

 virtues from some fancied good resulting from their use in various 

 ways. These same plants had different names in every state and 

 country then known, and those who adopted them in their paniceas. 



