The history of BOTANY. 
1 1 
of Trees, or ever grew upon them, if they would have taken him altoge- 
ther ; if they had read his fourth book before they had criticifed his firfr. 
The Bryum of the ancient Greeks, was the Small Green Sea Weed, 
which the common Writers on Plants cal! Lactura Marina, and the 
vulgar, from the colour and palace of growth. Oyster Green. This 
Plant Theophrastus has not only named but deferibed, in the feventh 
chapter of his fourth book, where he treats of the other Sea Plants. He 
refers it to the Algas, and fays it is of a Grafs-green colour, with a curl- 
ed and fpreading leaf, not unlike the curled Lettuce, but more waved and 
wrinkled : he adds, that it has no ftalk, and that it grows under the fea- 
water, but in fliallow places, on ftones and potfherds, which happen to 
be there. This then vv'as plainly the Plant called abfolutely Eryum by the 
Greeks ; Aristotle mentions it, and Thkophrastus has deferibed it; and 
it is impoffible, that he who knew it a tea Plant, (liould place it upon Trees 
at Land. The fadt is this ; the young leaves, or firll flioots, of Oyder 
Green, being thin, filmy, and curled about, refemble not amifs thofe 
periHiable fims which make the fubftance of the buds in certain Trees: 
therefore the Greek calls that filmy matter in buds figuratively the 
Bryum of the Gems of Trees ; and after him his countrymen applied it to 
the Hop, becaufe that fruit is filmy ; and to the Olive Bud ; Bpuoy was the 
term for the flowering of that Tree. Theophrastus laments frequently 
the want of proper terms and names for what he is to deferibe ; and in the 
fam.e manner as here from another Vegetable, he often forms them on the 
names of parts fomething like in the bodies of animals, acknowledging the 
impcrfedl and improper expreffion, but pleading the neceflity. It is thus 
they are cmibarraffed who beat the untrodden paths of feience j and it has 
happened often, that they are thus rewarded : but feldom by fo refpedlcd 
names as thofe which join the cenfure' upon Theophrastus. 
The \vord Bpuov was in after times ufed as the name of a Tree .Moss, 
particularly of the long hairy kind. This is nothing to the fubjedb v/hen 
we are confidering Theophrastus; tho’, perhaps, kwas this which led 
his Tranflators into the error. We find the meaning of the word abiblute 
in his own writings: it was the name of that Sea Weed, and of nothing 
elfe, till himfelf ufed it figuratively for thefe films of buds. Indeed no 
term ever became more vague in its fignification than this did afterwards. 
All Molfes, all Excrefcences on Trees, and every thing of like kind, ob- 
tained the name of Bryum. 
Dioscorides, who wrote of Plants as Medicines, has limited the fenfe 
of Bryum to one of the Tree Mofies, us’d in fome officinal compofitions ; 
C 2 but 
