40 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



vinous, and medicinal plants. Nearly contemporary with Dioscorides 

 were Cato, Varro, and Virgil, who wrote on agriculture and rural 

 economy. 



Following these worthies came the elder Pliny, who, in his fifty- 

 sixth year, became the victim of his curiosity for enquiry, while 

 attempting to witness an eruption of Vesuvius. He devoted sixteen 

 of the thirty-seven books comprising his " History of the World " to 

 plants. Besides enumerating the discoveries of Theophrastus and 

 Dioscorides he described many new species, bringing the number up 

 to above a thousand. Like the other ancient botanists though, Pliny 

 admits, with little or no distinction, truth and error, useful knowledge 

 and absurd fable, which fact, together with the want of a proper 

 systematic arrangement, renders it impossible to determine which are 

 the plants he described. 



With Pliny closes what I have called the Ancient Epoch of 

 Botany, for after his time, its study rapidly declined, and ages of 

 darkness and lethargy succeeded. 



The second, or Arabian, Epoch of Botany began during the 

 eighth century, with the reappearance of the elements of ancient plant 

 lore among the Saracens. This barbarous but noble race, who had 

 formerly shown their contempt for science by the wanton destruction 

 of the magnificent library of Alexandria, at this time became imbued 

 with a love of it, chiefly by contact with the many enlightened men, 

 who, banished by the Emperor Theodosius, had found refuge 

 amongst them. A succession of Caliphs, most notable of whom was 

 the famous Haroun Alraschid, by their fostering care of learning 

 and learned men, made Bagdad the most enlightened city in the 

 world. Serapion, w^ell known in medicine, stands first on the 

 Arabian catalogue of botanists, and was followed by Rhazis, Avicenna, 

 Averhoes and Actuarius, while Plato Apuleius, of whose herbarium 

 very old manuscript copies are still preserved, is supposed to have 

 lived about this period. These men discovered many plants of 

 Persia, India and China, which were unknown to their predecessors, 

 but unluckily they thought less of observing nature and chronicling 

 their own observations, than of translating and commenting on the 

 old Grecian writers. In consequence, their descriptions of plants 

 are impeifect, and, for want of a systematic arrangement and com- 

 prehensive nomenclature, generally unrecognizable. If, however. 



