128 Dr. Noehden's Account of the BanyatuTree. 



Pliny appears to great disadvantage, by the side of such an author as 

 Theophrastus. The information which he collected, upon almost every 

 subject, though vast in quantity, loses much of its value, from the precipi- 

 tation with which it was taken up. His inordinate desire of reading every 

 thing that could be read, which is admirably described by his nephew,* 

 and the ambition of making extracts from a multitude of authors, left him 

 no time for digesting what he had thus heaped together, much less for exer- 

 cising any judgment, or discrimination. His extreme parsimony of time 

 would naturally induce hurry, in making his extracts, which proved 

 another source of inaccuracy. It is, for these reasons, not to be wondered 

 at, that the correctness of Pliny's statements should, on many occasions, be 

 subject to doubt, and that his authority should be brought into question. 

 It is probable, also, that he may have mixed with tlie account of Theo- 

 phrastus some other narration, less accurate ; such, for instance, as might be 

 found in those historical writers, who had described Alexander's expedition. 

 It has been observed, that Theophrastus likens the size of the fruit of the 

 Banyan to a sort of legume, which he calls jps/Sc^of, and it has been said 

 that this was either a kind of large pea, or some variety of bean. Pliny 

 uses the expression faba, bean, as synonymous with the term I^i[2a3og : and 

 we shall perhaps be near the truth, if we suppose, that what both authors 

 had in view, was some kind of kidney-bean, approaching the size of a 

 hazel-nut, stated by modern botanists to be about the dimension of the 

 fruit of the Banyan. Faba, in classical Latin, does not signify the common 

 garden-bean, but seems to be a general term for both the phaselus and the 

 phaseolus ; which latter is the kidney-bean, the former the garden bean. 



Theophrastus and Pliny are tlie two authors who have spoken of the 

 tree, as naturalists. Those which are now to be quoted, merely give the 

 popular accounts, such as were to be met with in the histories, and memoirs 

 of Alexander's exploits. Of this character is a passage in Quintus Curtius, 

 which undoubtedly refers to the Ficus Indica .t " There were woods," (in 



» Plin. Epist. III. 5. 



f Lib. IX. c. 1, p. 193. Vol. II. ed. Bip. Hinc Poro amneque superato, ad interiora Indice 

 processit. Sihee erant prope in immeiisum spatium diffusce, procerisque et in eximiam altiludinem 

 editis arboribus umbrosee : plerique rami instar ingenlium stijntum fiexi in hummn, rursus, qua se 

 curvaverant, erigebantur adeo, ut species esset non rami resurgentis, sed arboris ex sud radicr 

 generates. 



