224 
NATURE NOTES 
in his way as great a love of theft as the jackdaw. At the time 
of nesting it is not unusual to see a division of labour, one of 
the pair standing guard over the work and protecting it from 
thieves, from the time that the lowest bars of sticks (often from 
old nests broken up) are crossed to the time when the “ procreant 
cradle ” is complete. Were it not for the policeman so watching 
the work incessantly, no rook-building would be sacred, and 
impudent thieves abounding in the neighbouring city of rooks 
would carry away and appropriate their neighbours’ house for 
mere love of mischief and plunder. 
AN OLD-WORLD BOTANIST, 
g ijaSiT is always interesting to light upon some old work of 
®k|! science published a century or two ago, at a time when 
oVVl! the epoch-making work of more modern discovery was 
as yet undone. Scanning the pages of such a work 
we realise that men now live in another world of ideas altogether 
from that inhabited by our author, and there is a real antiquarian 
interest in marking the crude hypotheses and tentative interpre- 
tations of infant science. But if, besides, we can find one or 
two suggestions which have long afterwards been at last verified 
(independently or not) and adopted into the commonplaces of 
science ; or if again we can see how very near our old-world * 
author was to the track of some discovery, which yet he missed ; 
then our interest is doubled and no longer merely antiquarian. 
These considerations have suggested to me that a brief notice of 
the views held by an old English botanist (in common, no doubt, 
with many of his contemporaries) might prove not uninterest- 
ing; and the more so since this author is not even mentioned 
by Prof. Vines in the terribly extensive bibliography of his 
“ Physiology of Plants.” 
Philip Miller was “ gardener to the Worshipful Company of 
Apothecaries at their Botanical Garden at Chelsea, and F.R.S.” 
In 1733 he published the second edition of his “ Gardener’s 
Dictionary,” as a thick folio volume; and it is a significant 
comment on the copyright legislation of that day, that there is 
prefixed to the volume a Royal Licence granting to the author 
— for fourteen years — the sole right of printing his own book ! 
This dictionary is, in the main, an account (alphabetically 
arranged) of all the cultivated plants then known in England, 
with directions for their treatment, and diagnoses of the genera, 
besides a general account of all relevant scientific terms. 
With these matters, however, we have no concern here; for 
* In science, and emphatically in botanical science, an author of 150 years 
back may certainly be called “ old-world.” 
