232
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
" which filled a place in history during the many intervening
" centuries. The Isatis tinctoria has, moreover, done much
" more than benefit humanity by supplying a popular colour
" for its clothes. It has brought economic prosperity to many
" communities. It has found a place on the artist's palette.
" It has been widely employed both in medical and in surgical
" therapeutics. Its greatest service to human welfare, however,
" has come through its influence on agriculture, an influence
" so potent as to justify Woad being called 'a pillar of
" civilization'."
A claim so high may encourage those who have not yet read
the work to do so, and to judge for themselves if that claim be
valid. Whatever their decision, they will find the task pleasant
and profitable, and will learn how important a part one particular
crop may play in "making history." But the work has another
value. Like sartorial fashion, intellectual interest is subject to
change : arbiters of taste in letters now urge us to replace interest
in the records of constitutional, dynastic and ecclesiastical
disputes, by interest in accounts of the economic changes and
industrial developments to which such disputes often owed
their origin. The advice is sound ; this modern study takes us
one step nearer essential truth. But these newer accounts are
apt to confine their attention to the consequences of the economic
changes and industrial developments they describe, and to urge
their readers to support or condemn particular policies adopted
to control these changes and guide these developments. What
the thoughtful, as contrasted with the political, reader desires is
to know something about the causes of the altered outlook and
modified practice that have made these changes and developments
inevitable. This service "the Woad Plant and its Dye" endea-
vours to render those who wish to guide their feelings by their
reason.
The author of that work assures the reader that it is "by no
" means an exhaustive study. There is room for fuller treat-
" ment by an expert with leisure to study in detail the historical
" archives, both national and municipal, in those countries in
" which Woad formed an important commodity. Florence
" especially possesses precious documents that have not yet been
" examined in detail." Nevertheless, what Dr. Hurry has done
fully entitles him to conclude his introduction to this work on