After Aristotle 63 



as originating from the brain, and distinguished between nerves 

 of motion and of sensation. He described the oviduct of the 

 sheep and rightly held that life was possible without the spleen. 



The second Christian century brings us two writers who, 

 while scientifically inconsiderable, acted as the main carriers 

 of such tradition of Greek biology as reached the Middle Ages, 

 Pliny and Dioscorides. Pliny (A. D. 23-79), though a Latin, 

 owes almost everything of value in his encyclopaedia to Greek 

 writings. In his Natural History we have a collection of 

 current views on the nature, origin, and uses of plants and 

 animals such as we might expect from an intelligent, industrious, 

 and honest member of the landed class who was devoid of critical 

 or special scientific skill. Scientifically the work is contemptible, 

 but it demands mention in any study of the legacy of Greece, 

 since it was, for centuries, a main conduit of the ancient 

 teaching and observations on natural history. Read throughout 

 the ages, alike in the darkest as in the more enlightened periods, 

 copied and recopied, translated, commented on, extracted and 

 abridged, a large part of Pliny's work has gradually passed into 

 folk-keeping, so that through its agency the gipsy fortune-teller 

 of to-day is still reciting garbled versions of the formulae of 

 Aristotle and Hippocrates of two and a half millennia ago. 



The fate of Dioscorides (flourished A.D. 60) has been not 

 dissimilar. His work On Materia Medico, consists of a series 

 of short accounts of plants, arranged almost without reference 

 to the nature of the plants themselves, but quite invaluable 

 for its terse and striking descriptions which often include habits 

 and habitats. Its history has sho\vn it to be one of the most 

 influential botanical treatises ever penned. It provided most of 

 the little botanical knowledge that reached the Middle Ages. 

 It furnished the chief stimulus to botanical research at the 

 time of the Renaissance. It has decided the general form of 

 every modern pharmacopoeia. It has practically determined 

 modern plant nomenclature both popular and scientific. 



