Author Description

Excerpt from The Canadian Horticulturist, Vol. 2: May, 1879 As might be supposed, plants, shrubs and trees have been studied by men of intelligence and observation from the earliest times to the present day. In the Holy Scriptures we are told that Solomon spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall and. A greater than Solomon exhorted His followers to consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. Among the ancient Greeks we find that Hippocrates, about the year bc. 409, introduced an enlightened system of medical study, connected with the study of plants. Aristotle, about B. C. 350, wrote a learned work on plants; and his idisciple, Theophrastus, about B. C. 300, wrote on the same subject, and described nearly 500 species. The principal botanical writers among the Romans are Pliny the Elder, and Dioscorides, who both ourished towards the end of the first cen tury of the Christian era. In the materia medica of Dioscorides about 700 plants are described, and the greater part of our old English herba lists are made up from his writings. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.