8 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



by him to study, and explains that in speaking of the bath 

 he means the time when he was actually in the water, 

 for while he was being scrajDed with the strigil* he either 

 had some book read to him, or dictated himself. A friend 

 once interrupting a person who was reading to him, on 

 account of the mispronunciation of some word, and making 

 him read the passage over again, "You understood him, 

 didn't you?" said Pliny. "Yes," said the other. "Why 

 then did you make him go over it again ? Through this 

 interruption of yours we have lost more than ten lines." 

 It was a maxim of his that no book is so bad but that some 

 good may be got out of it. The number of authors quoted 

 by Pliny has been counted, and found to be between four 

 and five hundred. Buffon writes thus of his ' History of 

 the World ':t—" It is, so to say, a compilation from all that 

 had been written before his time : a record of all that was 

 excellent or useful; but his record has in it features so 

 grand, this compilation contains matter grouped in a manner 

 so novel, that it is preferable to most of the original works 

 that treat upon similar subjects." Cuvier also places it 



•'- The stiigil was an instrument used both by the Greeks and 

 Romans in theii- elaborate system of bathing, to scrape perspii-ation 

 and other impurities from tlie skin after the bath, as our grooms 

 scrape horses, or as the skin is dressed in modern " Turkish Baths." 

 It was a one-handed instrument with a straight handle and a cui-ved 

 blade, and, as it was not blunt, its edge was softened by the appHcation 

 of oil fi'om a small dropping bottle. 



t Generally called ' PHny's Natm-al History.' Can this be called a 

 proper translation of ' Historia Mundi ' ?— or is it so good a title for a 

 work that includes not only various crowns, and chaplets, and plants 

 used m rehgious observances, but the price of dining tables, and a 

 quantity of other matter which the freest stretch of a very elastic 

 subject could scarcely Iring within any comprehensible hmit of 

 " Natm-al History " ? Humboldt adopts the happy term * Cosmos ' for 

 his similar work. 



