Theop?irastu.i. 81 



Theophrastus lias noticed in his work about 5G0 plants. 

 There are mentioned in it a good many forest-trees, and fruit- 

 trees, most of the culinary vegetables, the cerealia, and, lastly, 

 a great many Indian plants, which have been discovered again 

 only since the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. 



Theophrastus wrote another work relating to botany. It is 

 his treatise on the Causes of Plants. In it he treats of some 

 questions in vegetable physiology, but principally on the influ- 

 ence of external circumstances on plants. He proposes a cer- 

 tain number of questions, which it is not always easy to answer. 

 He asks, for example, why the best fruit does not always con- 

 tain the best seed ? — why the fruit of wild trees has not so sweet 

 a relish as that of cultivated trees ? He puts other physical 

 questions. He would have it explained, for instance, why ani- 

 mals have not in general a pleasant odour; while many plants 

 diffuse a very agreeable fragrance.'' It is, says he, because 

 animals, being of a hot, dry constitution, and having a thin 

 breath, throw off by evaporation the superfluous parts of their 

 alunent. 



The physics of Theophrastus ai'e worse than those of Aris- 

 totle. 



Theophrastus, like his master, studied almost all the branches 

 of natural history. He wrote some small treatises on different 

 points in zoology. 



There is one of them which treats of fish which live without 

 water, in which he gives proof of extensive knowledge of the 

 productions of India. 



He speaks of flying-fish ; of those which the sea in ebbing 

 leaves upon the rocks ; of those which lie buried in the mud of 

 lakes, as the loach, and comitis fossilis, which is sometimes found 

 in slime when thickened and dried. He speaks of an Indian 

 fish that comes out of the water. This fish, which was unknown 

 to us till about twenty years ago, when we were made acquaint- 

 ed with it through the account of M. Hamilton Buchanan, is 

 the ophicephalus. It lives in the Ganges; but it is found 

 sometimes at so great a distance from every appearance of wa- 

 ter, that it has even been thought to have fallen from heaven. 

 Theophrastus gives a pretty good description of it, and says 

 APBII .JUNE 1830. p 



