Everybody likes to gather flowers for the sake of their beauty and scent, and most young people ask the names and the uses of the plants which grow them. These appear to have been the questions that the earliest races of men sought to answer for themselves. They gave plants names, and ascribed some truthful and a great many very curious and false properties to them. Many of the first races of men lived on fruits, vegetables, and roots, and it became important to know good and nourishing plants from those which were poisonous. The ablest men of the tribes, probably, studied the names which had been given by custom to many plants; and the healing power of some plants, and the poisonous nature of others began to be known; the good and ill-disposed amongst men endeavoured to learn all about them. Thus the first steps in the science of plants were to name them, and to ascribe properties to them. It has often been noticed that there is some resemblance between the history of the progress of a science, during all the ages of civilization, and that of the rise and progress of one in the child, youth, and man. The child receives everything that it is told, as a truth, and loves the wonderful; the youth likes to hear of mysteries, and his emotions and poetic feeling lead him to desire general truths; and the man criticizes what he has been told, tries to learn for himself, and longs for exact knowledge and the absolute truth. So in the early days of civilization, men believed in everything that was told them, and ascribed wonderful properties to the nature around them which they saw was so beautiful and yet often so terrible. As the world got older, curious legends were associated with truths and falsities; and with the general diffusion of learning, and the careful exercise of the reasoning powers, knowledge became more exact and useful, and was followed for truth’s sake.