in all countries must
necessarily have attracted the attention of mankind from the earliest
times. The science that treats of them dates back to the days of
Solomon, who "spake of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on
the wall." The Chaldaeans, Egyptians and Greeks were the early
cultivators of science, and botany was not neglected, although the study
of it was mixed up with crude speculations as to vegetable life, and as
to the change of plants into animals. About 300 years before Christ
Theophrastus wrote a _History of Plants_, and described about 500
species used for the treatment of diseases. Dioscorides, a Greek writer,
who appears to have flourished about the time of Nero, issued a work on
Materia Medica. The elder Pliny described about a thousand plants, many
of them famous for their medicinal virtues. Asiatic and Arabian writers
also took up this subject. Little, however, was done in the science of
botany, properly so called, until the 16th century of the Christian era,
when the revival of learning dispelled the darkness which had long hung
over Europe. Otto Brunfels, a physician of Bern, has been looked upon as
the restorer of the science in Europe. In his _Herbarium_, printed at
Strassburg (1530-1536), he gave descriptions of a large number of
plants, chiefly those of central Europe, illustrated by beautiful
woodcuts. He was followed by other writers,--Leonhard Fuchs, whose
_Historia Stirpium_ (Basel, 1542) is worthy of special note for its
excellent woodcuts; Hieronymus Bock, whose _Kreutter Buch_ appeared in
1539; and William Turner, "The Father of English Botany," the first part
of whose _New Herbal_, printed in English, was issued in 1551. The
descriptions in these early works were encumbered with much medicinal
detail, including speculations as to the virtues of plants. Plants which
were strikingly alike were placed together, but there was at first
little attempt at systematic classification. A crude system, based on
the external appearance of plants and their uses to man, was gradually
evolved, and is well illustrated in the _Herbal_, issued in 1597 by John
Gerard (1545-1612), a barber-surgeon, who had a garden in Holborn, and
was a keen student of British plants.

One of the earliest attempts at a methodical arrangement of plants was
made in Florence by Andreas Caesalpinus (1519-1603), who is called by
Linnaeus _primus verus systematicus_. In his work _De Plantis_,
published at Florence in