THE STUDY OF PLANTS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. 3 



utilitarian point of view in a manner not essentially different from that of two 

 hundred — or even two thousand — years ago, and it may well be a long time 

 before they rise above this idea. 



In addition to the botanical knowledge thus initiated by the necessities of life, 

 a second avenue leading to the same goal was early established by man's sense of 

 beauty. The first effect of this was limited to the employment of wild flowers 

 and foliage for purposes of ornament and decoration. Later on, it led to the 

 cultivation of the more showy plants in gardens, and ultimately to the arts of 

 gardening and horticulture, which at different periods and in different countries 

 have passed through such various phases, corresponding to the standards of the 

 beautiful which have prevailed. 



THE DESCRIPTION AND CLASSIFICATION OF PLANTS. 



A third path leading to botanical knowledge springs from the impulse which 

 actuates those who are endowed with a keen perception of form to investigate 

 structural differences down to their most minute characteristics. Workers in this 

 field arrange and classify all distinct forms according to their external resemblances, 

 give them names appropriate to their position and importance, catalogue them, and 

 keep up the register when once it has been started. Many people possess, in addi- 

 tion, the remarkable taste for collecting, which causes them to find pleasure in 

 merely accumulating and possessing enormous numbers of specimens of the particu- 

 lar objects on which their fancy is fixed. 



This tendency of the human mind has played a very important part in the 

 history of botany. The first traces of it can be ascribed with certainty to a period 

 long before the commencement of our era; for such descriptions and other notes as 

 are contained in the Natural History of Plants, written by Theophrastus about the 

 year 300 B.C., are founded, for the most part, on the observations and experiments 

 of "Rhizotomoi," physicians and agriculturists, and it is obvious from the text of the 

 book that in some cases those authorities did seek out plants, and learn to distinguish 

 them for their own sakes, and not solely for their economic or medicinal value. 



At the time of the Roman Empire and in the Middle Ages, it is true, no one 

 troubled himself about plants other than those known to be in some way useful. 

 But there was a revival of the practice of hunting for plants for the purpose of 

 describing and enumerating all distinguishable forms, at that great epoch when the 

 nations of the West began to study the treasures of Greek thought, endeavouring 

 to adopt the point of view of antiquity, and to harmonize their own circumstances 

 with it. It was at this same period that art too shook itself free from the tradi- 

 tions of the Middle Ages, and became actuated by a new ideal based on the study 

 of the antique; but science, particularly natural science, has as good a claim as 

 art to regard that memorable time as its period of renaissance. Although the 

 ancient Greek writings on natural history, to which people turned with such 

 youthful enthusiasm in the fifteenth century, could not satisfy their thirst for 



