340 Lecture on Botany. 



I have thus, gentlemen, laid before you the highest considerations 

 in favor of the prosecution of scientific study, and confessedly with 

 the desire of urging upon you the necessity of weighing them 

 fully, now that you are about to enter upon a course of instruc- 

 tion in that special branch of Natural History, to which I shall 

 have the honor of directing your attention. You will find that 

 the more you are influenced by these considerations, the greater 

 will be your zeal and assiduity, and the more successful will be 

 your efforts to attain a sufiiciency of knowledge to gratify the 

 present and enable you to improve the future. Your interest will 

 be excited, as the science of Botany becomes gradually developed, 

 as the grand operations of nature are disclosed and the beautiful 

 phenomena of vegetable life portrayed. The value of the science, 

 in a practical point of view, will be properly estimated as you be- 

 come acquainted with the economy of plants, their nutritious and 

 medicinal properties, the conditions of soil and climate under 

 which they grow, their capability of special improvement in quality 

 and more especially their adaptation to human interests, — man's 

 life, comfort and happiness. 



It is usual, in an introductory lecture, to give a short sketch of 

 the history of the subject that is to engage the attention of the 

 student. I would be unwilling to adopt this course, were it not that 

 the history of Botany furnishes ample evidence of its cultivation, 

 even from an early period, as a practical science, and of the utility 

 of its knowledge in the advancement of the arts, and particularly 

 of Medicine, in the improvement of agricultural operations and the 

 attainment of a more perfect system of gardening. As this evi- 

 dence of the past will be probably more convincing than any 

 arguments I can here adduce, I propose relating to you a few 

 leading points of botanical history, that seem to me to be of value 

 and importance for the present purpose. 



Without entering into any speculations upon the probable 

 amount of knowledge possessed by man, at the earliest period of 

 the "world's history, of the nutritious qualities and medicinal pro- 

 perties of plants and the various uses to which they may have 

 been applied, a subject replete with interest, I will date my re- 

 marks from a period when we first observe Botany cultivated as 

 a science. 



We find the first evidences of botanical study and research 

 among the philosophers of ancient Greece. They devoted them- 

 selves principally to the digging of roots and the finding of herbs, 



