150 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



(2) Virgilii Bucoliconim EclogcB X. This Bucolics of Virgil. 

 With an English translation and notes, by J. Martyn. London, 

 1749, 4to. 



John Martyn was a physician, and Professor of Botany at 

 Cambridge, the friend of Sherard, Sloane, and Dillenius, and was 

 the first to establish the fact of this poet's profound knowledge of 

 plants. Both the works named were in so great demand among 

 men of erudition as to have been several times reissued, and in 

 octavo form. A German translation of Martyn's edition of the 

 Georgica was published at Hamburg in 1759. ^ 



(3) Flora Virgiliana. Eller forsok at utreta de waxter som 

 utforas i P. Virgilii Maronis Eclogae, Georgica och Aeneides. Jamte 

 Bihang om Romanes Matwaxter, by Anders Johan Retzius. Lund, 

 1809, 8vo. 



(4) Flore de Virgile. Composu pour la collection des Classiques 

 Latins, by A. L. F^e. 1822; also again in 1837. 



(5) Osservationi sulla Flora Virgiliana, by M. Tenore. Napoli, 

 1826. 



Although Virgil was by profession a man of letters and a poet, 

 he nevertheless exceeds the other agricultural writers of Roman 

 antiquity in the number of different plants which he knows, and 

 of which he makes mention; for Cato (b. c. 235-149) knew 125 

 kinds, Varro (e.g. 117-27) mentions 107, Virgil (b.c. 70-19) 164. 

 Yet the sum total of the plants of these Romans, 245, is only 

 about half the number that had been known by Theophrastus 

 some 300 years earlier. 



The celebrated Lamarck (1793) dedicated to Virgil a new genus 

 of African trees under the name Virgilia. 



Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella. — This very celebrated 

 Latin writer on agriculture and horticulture flourished in the 

 next generation after Virgil, during the reign of Tiberius Caesar, 

 and may have been in the midst of his years at the opening of the 

 Christian era. He was a native of Cadiz in Spain, and was educated 

 by his father, whom he characterizes as having been a man of 

 erudition and also an experienced practical farmer. 2 The son 

 declares himself to have been what one would now call an omnivo- 

 rous reader, and before settling in Rome had travelled somewhat 

 widely in Greece and Syria. 



Columella is the most voluminous of all the classic Roman 

 authors on rural topics. There are thirteen books, and these 



« Haller, Bibl Bot., vol. i, p. 68. 



2 Columella. De Re Rustica, Book ii. ch. 16. 



