120 Dr. Noehden's Account of the Banyan-Tree. 



quoted below,* he wrote about fifty volumes on the History of Animals, 

 or, as we should say, on Zoology alone : and we know from other sources, 

 that he also composed a work on Plants,! or on Botany. In the latter, 

 the mention of such a production as the Banyan-tree, could not have been 

 omitted. It is our misfortune to lament, that of these interesting writings 

 comparatively verj' little has been preserved to us. Of the work on 

 Animals, a certain portion remains ; and there, indeed, also exists a book 

 on Plants, attributed to Aristotle, but unquestionably spurious. His re- 

 searches, however, may be traced in authors that wrote after him, and who 

 enjoyed the advantage of the information which he had gathered. Thus 

 Pliny t declares, that the greatest part of what he himself has written on 

 zoology, is taken from the works of Aristotle ; and we may justly con- 

 clude, that Theophrastus, an author to whom our attention will be presently 

 directed, has built on the same foundation. 



Whatever passed through the hands of Aristotle, on subjects of Natural 

 History, must be allowed to have had a value beyond that which any other 

 writer could have given it, both on account of his acuteness and intellectual 

 superiority, and of the channels, through which his information was de- 

 rived. It is not possible to conceive, as has before been intimated, that 

 among the natural curiosities of India, of which, through the interposition 

 of Alexander, he obtained a knowledge, such a phenomenon in the vege- 

 table world, as the Banyan-tree, should have escaped him ; more especially, 

 when it is considered, that even writers, as will be shown afterwards, who 

 merely employed themselves in recording the military and political achieve- 

 ments of Alexander, could not forbear noticing that remarkable object. 



Hence it appears probable, that Theophrastus, who was the favourite 

 and most distinguished pupil of Aristotle, and who succeeded him in the 

 Lyceum, as head of the Peripatetic school, gained, in substance, what he 

 has left recorded of the Banyan, from the literary stores of his master, to 



* N. H. VIII. 17. Bip. The passage has been transcribed in the foregoing note. 



+ IImi fuTuv a 0, de plantis libri duo, two books on p'ants. See the Life of Aristotle, by 

 Diogenes Laertius, in the 1st volume of Buhle's edition of Aristotle's works, p. 22. Also his 

 life by an anonymous author ; ib. p. 64. 



t Nat. Hist. VIII. 17. Vol. II. p. 79. ed. Bip. — quiiiqunginta Jerme volumina ilia praclara de 

 animalibus condidit ; qua a me colleda in arctum, cum iit qua: ignoraverat, quceso ut legenles boni 

 consulant, in imiversis rerum naturce operibus, medioque darissimi regunt omnium desiderio, curn 

 nostra breviter peregrinantcs. 



