120 
BOTANY IN THE OLDEN TIME. 
BY R. GOODWIN MUMBRAY, RICHMOND, SURREY. 
There are few occupations more agreeable or instructive than turning over 
the pages of some very old book on natural science ; not so much for the in¬ 
formation sought, as to compare the dim light of other days with the broad 
noontide blaze we now enjoy ; to witness the labours of great minds who 
opened up the way since trodden by so many followers. Among those who 
have rendered good service to the extension of botanical knowledge, must be 
named Nehemiah Grew, a physician who practised in the seventeenth century. 
Possessed of ample means and a patient, ingenious mind, he examined with 
great care a vast number of substances employed in medicine, deducing thence 
what he modestly calls an 1 Idea of the Philosophical History of Plants, in¬ 
cluding the Anatomy of Boots, Trunks, Leaves, Flowers, Fruits, and Seeds; 
prosecuted with the bare Eye—and with the microscope. Bead before the 
Boyal Society, 167f.’’ 
Upon the flyleaf of the volume appears the following announcement, appa¬ 
rently extracted from the minute-book of the Boyal Society :— 
u At a meeting of the Council of the Boyal Society, Feb. 22, 168f. 
u Dr. Grew having read several lectures of the anatomy of plants, some 
whereof have been printed at divers times, and some are not printed ; with 
several other Lectures of their Colours , Odours , Lasts , and Salts; as also the 
Solution of Salts in Water; and of Mixture; all of them to the satisfaction of 
the said Society ; it is therefore Ordered, that He be desired, to cause them to 
[ l be ’ omitted] printed together, in one Volume. Chr. Wren, P.B.S.” 
The work is dedicated To His Most Sacred Majesty Charles II. King of 
Great Britain, etc. 
The style is sufficiently quaint, as the following extracts w T ill show:— 
“ Your Majesty will here see, That there are those things within a Plant little 
less admirable than within an Animal.—That a Plant as well as an Animal is 
composed of several Organical Parts ; some whereof may be called its Bowels. 
That every Plant hath Bowels of divers kinds, conteining divers kinds of 
Liquors. That every Plant lives partly upon Aer ; for the reception whereof, 
it hath those Parts which are answerable to Lungs. So that a Plant is, as it 
were, an Animal in Quires—as an Animal is a Plant, or rather several Plants 
bound up in one Volume. . . . That the Staple of the Stuff is so exquisitely fine 
that no Silkworm is able to draw anything near so small a Thred. So that one 
who walks about with the meanest Stick, holds a Piece of Nature’s Handicraft, 
which far surpasses the most elaborate Woof or Needlework in the World. 
. . . Yet not I, but Nature speaketh these things. ... In whose Name, I, the 
meanest of her Pupils, do in all humility crave your Majesties Gracious Pa¬ 
tronage. . . . Yuur Majesty deeming it to be a more Noble Design To enlarge 
The Territories of Knowledge than those of Dominion.—And the Highest 
Pitch of Human Glory not to rule in any sort over many, but to be a Good 
Prince over Wise Men.” 
This last paragraph reads more like a piece of joking than real earnest; the 
quiet sarcasm which occasionally crops out in subsequent pages, leads one to 
think that, like Artemus Ward, he sometimes u rote satirical .” Then follows 
the Preface:— 
“ It is a Politick or Civil Virtue in every prudent man’s Eye, To set himself 
an example, in what he doth, unto others. And in so doing, he looks upou 
himself as accountable in some sort to all Men. . . . The first occasion of my 
directing my Thoughts this way, was in the year 1664 upon reading some of 
the many and curious Inventions of Learned Men on the Bodies of Animals— 
