3-62 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



vrhich appears with his name, is an imposture of the middle age.*, full 

 of errors and absurdities.' 



His disciple, friend, and successor, Theophrastus of Eresos, is, as we 

 have said already, the first great writer on botany whose works we 

 possess ; and, as may be said in most cases of the first great writer, he 

 offers to us a richer store of genuine knowledge and good sense than 

 all his successors. But we find in him that the Greeks of his time, 

 who aspired, as we have said, to collect and systematize a body of 

 information on every subject, failed in one half of their object, as far 

 as related to the vegetable world. Their attempts at a systematic dis- 

 tribution of plants were altogether futile. Although Aristotle's divi- 

 sions of the animal kingdom are, even at this day, looked upon with 

 admiration by the best naturalists, the arrangements and comparisons 

 of plants which were contrived by Theophrastus and his successors, 

 have not left the slightest trace in the modern form of the science ; 

 and, therefore, according to our plan, are of no importance in our his- 

 tory. And thus we can treat all the miscellaneous information con- 

 cerning vegetables which was accumulated by the whole of this 

 school of writers, in no other way than as something antecedent to 

 the first progress towards systematic knowledge. 



The information thus collected by the unsystematic writers is of 

 various kinds ; and relates to the economical and medicinal uses of 

 plants, their habits, mode of cultivation, and many other circum- 

 stances : it frequently includes some description ; but this is always 

 extremely imperfect, because the essential conditions of description 

 had not been discovered. Of works composed of materials so hetero- 

 geneous, it can be of little use to produce specimens ; but I may quote 

 a few words from Theophrastus, which may serve to connect him with 

 the future history of the science, as bearing upon one of the many 

 problems respecting the identification of ancient and modern plants. 

 It has been made a question whether the following description does 

 not refer to the potato. 4 He is speaking of the differences of roots : 

 " Some roots," he says, " are still different from those which have been 

 described ; as that of the arachidn^ 6 plant : for this bears fruit under- 

 ground as well as above : the fleshy part sends one thick root deep 

 into the ground, but the others, which bear the fruit, are more slender 



s Mirbel, Botanique, ii. 505. 4 Theoph. i. 11. 



1 Most probably the Arach-iis hypogcea, or ground-nut. 



