The vine comes early into notice in the Bible, and it had been studied, for wine was made of its fruit. Solomon loved nature, because it brought him into the presence of truth and beauty, and he “spoke of trees from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall.” This was part of his wisdom. And the great traveller, Herodotus, shows us that a taste for natural history had, in his time, found a place in the mind of the Greeks—a great race who followed after the first child-like nature-studies of the Chaldeans, Assyrians, and Babylonians had merged into real knowledge. In speaking of the luxuriant vegetation of the plains of Babylon—now dreary wastes—he is so far from desiring to astonish merely, that he says “the blades of wheat and barley are full four fingers wide; but as to the size of the trees which grow from millet and sesame, though I could mention it I will not, knowing well that those who have not been in that country will hardly believe what I have said already.” It is clear that when the Greeks were in the child-like stage of plant lore, the older races had passed it, and were successful cultivators of plants that had required much study to turn to use. But the Greeks soon made amends, and the teacher of Alexander the Great, Aristoteles, tried to arrange plants, and to classify them according to their peculiarities. Plants and herbs had been long used as medicine, and the poisonous properties of aconite had been employed to destroy one of the noblest men of old, before this time, so that this celebrated naturalist had the knowledge, which had been accumulating for centuries, to put in order and to arrange.