XXVlil HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 



This amount of contention was probably caused by the 

 extreme meagreness of the original descriptions, if they can 

 be dignified by that term, so that the fancy of each succeeding 

 writer had abundant scope in endeavouring to fit, and to per- 

 suade others that he had fitted, plants of Northern Europe to 

 accounts written in the Mediterranean region. Some of the 

 MS. copies of Dioscorides still extant have figures of the plants 

 spoken of ; the most celebrated of these is in the Imperial 

 Library at "Vienna, from which plates were prepared under the 

 superintendence of Jacquin. Two impressions only appear 

 to have been taken ofl", one being sent to Linnaeus, which is 

 now in the Library of the Linnean Society in London, the 

 other was sent as a loan or gift to Sibthorp, to assist in his 

 above-mentioned labours, and that copy is now at Oxford, in 

 the Library attached to the Botanical Garden. 



Pliny, the next in order, is too well known to need more 

 than a passing mention; his laborious compilations on plants 

 have no original value whatever. Galen must be cited here, 

 for his doctrine of temperatures of plants, hot, cold, moist, or 

 dry, pervaded medical treatises for many centuries, and the 

 botany of those days was almost entirely therapeutical. 



From this period onwards for three hundred years, the 

 knowledge of plants, beyond the merest economic requirements, 

 sufiered total eclipse in Europe. The Arabs alone bore the 

 lighted torch of learning, and to them Western nations owe 

 a deep debt of gratitude, for the discovery and use of many 

 species and drugs of vegetable origin. 



Conspicuous amongst these sages, we find Serapion, Razis, 

 Avicenna and Averroes, to use the forms of their names best 

 known. Others, equally, if not more worthy of fame, are less 

 known by reason of their writings remaining in their original 

 oriental dress. But the longest night must end, and the dark 

 ages slowly drew on towards the awakening of men to the rich 

 treasures of knowledge stored up in the classics, or simpler 



