Lecture on Botany. 341 



in order to advance tlie arts and particularly medicine. They 

 were elegantly styled RhizqwMtce, (wood-cutters) and not unfre- 

 quently nick-named Pharmacopolce, (barterers of medicine or 

 druggists.) They were also called Cultivators of Physics. This 

 latter title was somewhat appropriate, for it was not so much the 

 naming and classifying of plants they studied, but their aim was 

 an explanation of their phenomena and their employment as 

 physical substances in arts and trades. The great philosopher 

 Aristotle is reckoned with justice, the first cultivator of the natu- 

 ral science of Plants. He collected and described many medici- 

 nal plants, but his genuine works are supposed to have been lost. 

 His favorite disciple, hoAvever, the eloquent Theophrastus imbibed 

 the principles and improved upon the information of his great 

 teacher. In his History of Plants, he exhibits deep reasoning and 

 furnishes evidence of his constant and excellent observations of 

 the phenomena of the vegetable world. Theophrastus was also 

 the first who kept a garden for plants, and in his legacy he named 

 some of his scholars as keepers of this property. Immediately 

 after his time, the science of nature lapsed into comparative ob- 

 scurity till the subjugation of Greece by the Romans, who, acting 

 upon the knowledge imparted to them by the conquered, applied 

 it to rural economy, horticulture and agriculture. It was in the 

 middle of the first century of our era that flourished the most cele- 

 brated of writers on ancient Botany. This was Pedacius Dios- 

 corides of Anazarbus in Silicia, a renowned physician who fol- 

 lowed the Roman armies in their expeditions throughout the 

 Empire. In his Materia Medica, he enumerates all the medici- 

 nal plants then known, describes their characters and properties, 

 and gives proofs of their efiicacy in diseases. This work held 

 universal sway in the schools for more than 1500 years, as the 

 only fountain of all knowledge relating to Natural History and 

 particularly of botanical information. To him succeeded Caius 

 Plinius Secundus, known as the elder Pliny, who left lasting me- 

 morials of his great learning in his " Summary of all Science, 

 Knowledge and Arts." He also added to the list of known plants. 

 A dark cloud again brooded over the science of Botany. Its study 

 was for a long period forgotten or neglected by the Romans. It 

 would seem that during the darkness of the middle ages up to the 

 thirteenth century, the Arabians, who derived their knowledge 

 entirely from Dioscorides through a distorted translation of his 

 work, were the only nation who apjilied themselves diligently to 



