Volume 1

The early naturalists : their lives and work (1530-1789) / by L.C. Miall.

  • Miall, L. C. (Louis Compton), 1842-1921.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The early naturalists : their lives and work (1530-1789) / by L.C. Miall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    upon it, and begin to get ready a meal, when the whale, awakened by the heat of the fire, plunges and drowns them all; that the eagle can look at the sun when it is at the brightest; that aged eagles fly into the east, dip three times into a certain fountain, and become young again; that the pelican, having slain her own young, tears her body with her beak, when the blood, falling upon the young birds, brings them back to life. Even in the times when book-learning was well-nigh extinct, some practical knowledge of plants survived. Agriculture and horticulture were attentively pursued wherever the authority of princes or the sanctity of religious houses afforded protection against lawlessness. From the age of Charlemagne, which some historians have regarded as the nadir of learning and literature, there have come down to us the great emperors edicts for the government of his dominions and estates.1 One of these (Capitulare de villis imperialibus) enumerates the fruit-trees, vegetables, medicinal herbs and flowers which were ordered to be grown in the imperial gardens. Earle2 has prepared a list of English names of garden plants, which have come to us from the Latin, not through French or any other modern Romance language, but through intermediate Anglo-Saxon forms. Among the examples are the following :— Latin. Cannabis Caulis Crotalum Febrifugia Anglo-Saxon. Haenep Caul Hratele Feferfuge English. Hemp. Kale. [Yellow] Rattle. Feverfew. 1 These are called capitidaria, because they were arranged under heads (capitula). They are printed in the Monumenta Germanice Historica, fol. Hanover, 1835 (Legum tom. i.). 2 English Plant Names, sm. 8vo. Oxford, 1880, pp. xlix, 1.