CHAPTER II 



THEOPHRASTUS OF/,ERESUS. B. C. 370-286 (or 262). 



Linnaeus, in the practice of his favorite art of systematizing, 

 classified not only plants but the writers about them. The writers 

 he distinguishes primarily as Botanists, and Plant Lovers; recogniz- 

 ing as Botanists only such as treat of plants from some philosophic 

 or scientific point of view. Choosing his illustrations from the an- 

 nals of remote antiquity, he names among the earliest of the Greeks 

 who wrote of plants Hippocrates ^ ; but because he wrote of plants 

 only in the interests of medicine Linnaeus styles him Father of 

 Medicine ; a title that had been conceded to that worthy ages before 

 Linnaeus, and will be accorded him until the end of time, no doubt. 

 Similarly Aristotle, who is also known to have written upon plants, 

 but whose volumes on that subject have been lost, is down in the 

 Linnaean list of ancient celebrities as Prince of Philosophers. To 

 Theophrastus, however, he accords the title Father of Botany. 

 From this opinion, far from having been newly promulgated in 

 Linnasus' time, there has been no dissenting voice. On the con- 

 trary, Albert Haller, one of the most learned men in Europe in 

 his day, and a botanist o " such renown that Linnaeus held him in 

 reverence, and also in some fear, denominates Theophrastus 

 " the first o ' real botanists in point of time. " 2 Curtius Sprengel in 

 the nineteenth century, having rehearsed the names of a long line 

 of ancient authors who had written more or less concerning plants, 

 says: "But the most illustrious of them all, and the true father of 

 botany, was Theophrastus Eresius. "^ If the author of the latest of 

 nineteenth-century volumes of botanical history, Julius von Sachs, 

 makes but passing mention of Theophrastus, along with the names 

 of Galen, Dioscorides, and Pliny — as if he had not been otherwise a 

 botanist than they — he may be more or less excusable upon the 



> Linnaeus, Philosophia Botanica, § 9. 



2 ' ' Primus verorum botaniconim." Haller, Bibliotheca Botanica, vol. i, p. 3 1 . 

 ' " Celeberrimus autem omnium, verus rei herbariae parens, Theophrastus 

 fuit Eresius." Sprengel, Historia Rei Herbariae, vol. i, p. 66. 



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