364: HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



among several other instances, Theophrastus having said that the plane- 

 tree is in Italy rare, 11 Pliny, misled by the similarity of the Greek 

 word (spanian, rare), says that the tree occurs in Italy and Spain. 1 * 

 His work has, with great propriety, been called the Encyclopaedia of 

 Antiquity ; and, in truth, there are few portions of the learning of the 

 times to which it does not refer. Of the thirty-seven Books of which 

 it consists, no less than sixteen (from the twelfth to the twenty-seventh) 

 relate to plants. The information which is collected in these books, is 

 of the most miscellaneous kind; and the author admits, with little 

 distinction, truth and error, useful knowledge and absurd fables. The 

 declamatory style, and the comprehensive and lofty tone of thought 

 which we have already spoken of as characteristic of the Roman 

 writers, are peculiarly observable in him. The manner of his death is 

 well known : it was occasioned by the eruption of Vesuvius, A.D. 79, 

 to which, in his curiosity, he ventured so near as to be suffocated. 



Pliny's work acquired an almost unlimited authority, as one of the 

 standards of botanical knowledge, in the middle ages ; but even more 

 than his, that of his contemporary, Pedanius Dioscorides, of Anazarbtis 

 in Cilicia. This work, written in Greek, is held by the best judges 13 to 

 offer no evidence that the author observed for himself. Yet he says 

 expressly in his Preface, that his love of natural history, and his mili- 

 tary life, have led him into many countries, in which he has had 

 opportunity to become acquainted with the nature of herbs and trees. 14 

 He speaks of six hundred plants, but often indicates only their names 

 and properties, giving no description by which they can be identified. 

 The main cause of his great reputation in subsequent times was, that 

 he says much of the medicinal virtues of vegetables. 



We come now to the ages of darkness and lethargy, when the habit 

 of original thought seems to die away, as the talent of original obser- 

 vation had done before. Commentators and mystics succeed to the 

 philosophical naturalists of better times. And though a new race, 

 altogether distinct in blood and character from the Greek, appropriates 

 to itself the stores of Grecian learning, this movement does not, as 

 might be expected, break the chains of literary slavery. The Arabs 



11 Theopll. iv. 7. "Ei> HIV yap r<5 'A<5pio Tr\aravov ov cpaa'tv eivai irhrjv nepi TO A 

 hpov, aitaviav <5t Koii iv IraAi'a naai). 



12 Plin. Nat. Hist. xii. 3. Et alias (platanos) fuisse in Italia, ac nomiuatiin 

 ffispania, apud auctores invenitur. 



13 Mirbel, 510. " Sprengel, i. 136. 



