2. The beginnings of botany. Like most people to-day, the earliest botanical writers concerned themselves more with the uses of plants than with their forms and habits. Thus Pliny, the most learned of Roman writers on natural history, significantly remarks that there were, to be sure, other plants in the hedges, fields, and roadsides than those he had described, but they had no names and were of no use. It is surely only natural that the uses of plants should be what first arouses our interest in them. Every one can appreciate most readily the advantages of knowing all we can about things which contribute so greatly to our welfare.