224 SMITHSONIAN' MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



and even as the first of them in point of time after Theophrastus, 

 Tragus does not systematically describe all the plants which he 

 finds occasion to present for discussion. The most familiar things 

 of field and garden, such as every one has known from time im- 

 memorial he neglects, as to their organography, assuming, as did 

 the ancient authors, that the names will recall the images of the 

 plants to the mind of almost any reader. It is the wild things, 

 the native growths of Germany, together with the more recent 

 introductions into German gardens, which engage his powers of 

 verbal delineation. 



To the vocabulary of descriptive terminology Tragus does not 

 make any considerable additions. He very commonly employs 

 the old established system of comparisons ; conveying an impression 

 of the root, the stem and mode of growth, the leaf-outline, the in- 

 florescence of a less known plant, by comparing them with the like 

 organs in very familiar types. Sometimes he does, what every one 

 besides had always done, that is, he repeats old comparisons that 

 had been in steady use unaltered for a thousand years and more, 

 and occasionally he makes bold to suggest a new one which he 

 thinks better. Dioscorides had described in the following terms 

 the foliage of a certain plant :^ "Cyclamen has the leaves of the 

 mature ivy bush, but colored purple, and variegated with whitish 

 markings." Of course Tragus had pondered well this classic line, 

 but thought it might be improved. Here is his own description of 

 the leaves of what he takes to be the same plant. "The leaves 

 of cyclamen are spread over the ground in a circle, are very similar 

 to those of the ivy, oi , as I think, of the asarum rather, of a dark 

 green, underneath somewhat reddened, above more brownish, and 

 marked with whitish spots. "^ This is liable to be promptly ad- 

 judged a better description than the other, at least for cyclamen 

 leaves as most people are used to seeing them; and the cyclamen 

 which Tragus knew in Germany has foliage assuredly more like 

 that of asarum than like that of old ivy. But what renders the 

 attempted amendment of the Greek author's diagnosis infelicitous 

 is this, that Dioscorides never saw the cyclamen species that Tragus 

 knew, and that at least some of the several Mediterranean cyclamens 

 have leaves of more nearly ovate outline, and therefore better 

 likened to bush-ivy leaves than to those of asarum. The audacious- 

 ness of Tragus is not diminished by the consideration that Dios- 

 corides had not only also known asarum, but in describing its 



» Diosc. Book ii, ch. 158. 

 ' Stirp. Cotntn., p. 905. 



