596 BOWMAN— ECOLOGY AND 



much mud, therefore they grow not at any great distance from land 

 but very near to it." 



In the paragraph in which he has discussed the quahties of sea 

 water and the difficulties of its utilization in the plant economy 

 Plutarch almost suggests the theories of absorption and the ioniza- 

 tion of solutions. The occurrence of the " woods and plants " in the 

 Red Sea is also mentioned at another place in the " Moralia."* 

 "And the provinces of Gedrosia and Troglodytes, which lie near 

 the ocean sea, being by reason of drought barren and without any 

 trees, there grow, nevertheless, in the adjacent sea, trees of a won- 

 derful height and bigness, and green even to the very bottom, some 

 of which they call olive trees, others laurels, and others the hair of 

 Isis. And those plants which are named anacampserotes being 

 hanged up after they are plucked out of the ground not only live 

 but — which is more — bud and put forth green leaves." 



The influence of Nearchus and Theophrastus is seen in the ref- 

 erence to the olive and laurel but the " anacampserotes " are not 

 mentioned in the earlier authors. The word meant " bringing back 

 love" and the plants were used in making love philters. The plants 

 are, from the description, evidently the seedlings of Rhizophora 

 which have just been rooted, but whether the ancients really re- 

 garded those seedlings as having an aphrodisiacal effect can not be 

 accurately determined. 



Arrian, 136 A.D.," is the last of the classic writers to mention 

 the mangrove. In his " Anabasis " he quotes Aristobulus and 

 Nearchus in describing the plants observed on Alexander's march 

 through Asia, but the references are essentially all alike and per- 

 haps Theophrastus in his " Historia Plantarum " summarized all the 

 observations on Rhizophora of his day and all the later authors 

 copied the accounts as reported by Alexander's companions. There 

 are not any mangrove references then in literature from Arrian's 

 time, 136 A.D., until almost the middle of the thirteenth century. 



In 1230 the Moorish botanist, Abou'l Abbas en-Nebaty,^° after 

 exploring Spain, Barbary coasts and Egypt made a long expedition 



s Plutarch, " Moralia," ed. Bernardakis, 5, 455, Goodwin, V., 278. 

 3 Arrian, " Anab.," VI., 22, 4 f. 



10 Abou'l Abbas en-Nebaty, Introd. to " Ibu el-Beithar" (Leclerq), V. 

 Notices des Manuscrit's, T. 23. 



