A BOTANIST OF THE NINTH CENTURY. 527 



and thereby put themselves in a condition to resist the attack of the 

 wind, to support the fruits, and to spread themselves out. Those 

 stocks that bear fruit are called palmites, the fruitless ones spadones. 

 The leaf of the vine serves to protect the branches from cold and heat, 

 and to defend the clusters against injury. The clusters are composed 

 of fat and juicy berries hanging from the comb." The different kinds 

 of fruits, pulse, field-plants, and kitchen-garden vegetables are then 

 described. 



The next division treats of the habitat of plants, and shows how 

 each plant prefers a particular kind of soil, whence one will succeed 

 better on one kind of soil, another on a different kind, and neither will 

 do well in a situation badly adapted to it. 



Descriptions are afterward given of plants coming under other 

 heads than those above mentioned those whose fruits are fit for food : 

 the oak, beech, Phoenix, Pomacece, Syrian bean, fig, cherry, mulberry, 

 almond, cherry, Ceratonia, pepper (with a recipe for detecting adul- 

 teration), Nardus crocus (saffron) ; those which are antidotes to poi- 

 son : the walnut (Nux), radish (Paphanns), celery, rue, oleander, 

 germander ; medical plants : myrtle, sage, hyacinth, lettuce, thyme, 

 aristolochia, Prunus, Solarium, mallow, mint, ceterach, saxifrage, dic- 

 tamus, wormwood, spurge, fennel, ivy, madder, helleboi-e, heliotrope, 

 thistle, maiden-hair, borage, cinnamon, cyclamen, mandrake, poppy ; 

 poisonous plants : hemlock, water-hemlock, hyoscyamus, aconite, Oct- 

 mum, basil (if one pulls up a handful of basil, he says, all the scor- 

 pions in the neighborhood will come around) ; resin- and gum-bearing 

 plants : the pine (which affords amber), cedar, pistachio, olive, Doce- 

 ma, Pojyulus, Boswellia, balsam-tree (with a recipe for the detection of 

 adulterations), liquidambar, convolvulus, ferula ; timber-trees : spruce, 

 cypress, juniper, persimmon, linden, willow, poplar, oak, larch, aquila- 

 ria, box. 



The scope, arrangement; and method of treatment of the several 

 parts of the work differ but little from those of the botanical depart- 

 ment, which we have thus briefly reviewed. 



We close with a return to the figure with which we began. Ra- 

 banus is not one of the grand towers of the temple of Science at which 

 posterity will gaze admiringly, nor is he one of the massive buttresses 

 whence numerous shafts and points arise ; we should rather compare 

 him to one of the solid stones that are sunk one upon the other into 

 the soft ground to be hardly ever seen again by the eyes of men one 

 of those who in quiet, busy toil have laid the foundation among the 

 people which now bears so mighty a structure. Such men will always 

 be worthy of our esteem, and should be gratefully remembered by us. 

 Rabanus was one of the most eminent among these men. He was 

 incontestably the most learned man of his times ; and he was the first 

 German who ever wrote on science. 



