ANAGAL'LIS MONEL/LI. 
MONELLl’S PIMPERNEL. 
Class Order. 
PENTANDRIA. MONOGYNIA. 
Natural Order. 
PRIMDLACEiE. 
Native of 
Height. 
Flowers in 
Duration. 
Cultivated 
Italy. 
9 inches. 
June Sept. 
Perennial. 
in 1648. 
No. 399. 
Anagallis, from the Greek anagelao, to laugh, 
from its exhilarating properties. Monelli, the 
name of an Italian botanist. 
We have been requested to notice the leading 
ancient botanists. We here concisely do so. 
Aristotle was the first of the ancient Greek philo- 
sophers, of whose works much is known. He was 
descended through a long line of ancestry, from 
AEsculapius, the pupil of Chiron, the wise Centaur, 
who also instructed Hercules and Achilles, twelve 
Hundred years before Christ. These heroes and 
philosophers having been deified, their names are 
mixed up with fables which bore morals that can- 
not now be fully explained. Theophrastus, the 
pupil of Aristotle, lived about three centuries before 
Christ. From Theophrastus we have, at the present 
day, many botanical names ; but from Dioscorides, 
who lived two centuries later, we have not only 
names, but descriptions, and the virtues of plants, 
as they were then estimated. 
Pliny, in the first century of the Christian era, 
wrote his Natural History, in which he copied much 
of Dioscorides. In the succeeding century to Pliny, 
