LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 15I 



aggregate some two hundred and sixty chapters, mostly long ones, 

 and if none of the chapters are very strictly botanical, the whole 

 work is a treasury of information about ancient husbandry, and 

 the treatment of cultivated plants and trees. From him we have 

 the earliest account of the device called a hot-bed, heated from 

 beneath by a mass of fermenting manure, and protected from the 

 rigors of winter weather by panes of glass. He reports that by 

 these means Tiberius Caesar raised cucumbers all the year around.^ 



To Columella we are again indebted for a complete account of the 

 methods of grafting as practised by the ancients. ^ 



Sprengel has given a considerable list of plants and trees that are 

 first brought to notice by this author.^ 



Near the end of the eighteenth century two distinguished botan- 

 ists almost simultaneously bethought themselves of the propriety 

 of consecrating a genus to Columella. The Columellia of Ruiz 

 and Pavon (1754) appears to have the priority. 



Pedanios Dioscorides (about a. d. 64). — If to have written, 

 the most practically serviceable book of botany that the world 

 of learning knew of during sixteen centuries were the best title 

 to botanical greatness, to Dioscorides would readily be conceded 

 the absolute supremacy over all other botanists, not only of antiquity 

 but of all time. Concerning the duration and the absoluteness of his 

 supremacy Sprengel has the following: "During more than sixteen 

 centuries he was looked up to as the sole authority, so that every- 

 thing botanical began with him. Every one who undertook the 

 study of botany, or the identification of medicines swore by his 

 words. Even as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century 

 both the academic and the private study of botany may almost 

 be said to have begun and ended with the text of Dioscorides."'* 



Almost volumes have been written in controversy as to the 

 time when Dioscorides lived; though the extremes of opinion do 

 not assign him an earlier date than b. c. 30, or a later than a. d. 

 98 ^ ; and the most probable seems to be that which locates him 

 in about the middle of the first century of our era. That he lived 

 in the time of Nero is inferred almost to a certainty from remarks 

 of Tacitus and of Galen. ^ 



> De Re Rustica, Book xi, ch. 3. 

 ' Ibid., iii, ch. 11. 



> Hist. Ret Herb., i, 149-151. 



* Ibid., p. 151. 



5 Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, ii, 96-100. 



* Sprengel, Hist. Rei Herb., i, 152. 



