EUCALYPTUS TREES. 597 
scurity, particularly as far as plants are concerned. 
The Greeks and Romans sought chiefly knowledge 
of plants which were available for medicine, rural 
economy, or the work of their artisans ; the number 
of such plants, in those dawning days of knowledge, 
while the range of commerce was yet so restricted, 
being necessarily quite limited. Hippocrates was ac- 
quainted with 236 different plants in use at his time 
(460-351 B. C.). Tyrtamus Eresos, or Theophrastos, 
as this favorite disciple of Plato and Aristoteles is 
usually called, records 455 in his writings, some not 
indigenous to Greece (370-288 B. C.); his knowledge 
- being largely imbibed from the teachings of his mas- 
ters, who must be regarded as the founders of botany 
as a science, just as many other branches of knowledge 
owe their origin to these great philosophers. Diog- 
enes Laertius informs us that Theophrastos and his 
pupil, Demetrius Phalerius, who for ten years was 
Regent of Athens, possessed a garden, containing as 
well exotic as indigenous plants, in which he assem. 
bled his disciples. This has been considered by some, 
Cuvier among others, as the first attempt at a botanic 
garden, and doubtless it was here that Theophrastos 
instituted many of his numerous observations. Only 
with the renewed brighter dawning of knowledge in 
Western Europe his works became there accessible 
in the fifteenth century, when a Greek refugee, Theo- 
dore Gaza, was induced by Pope Nicholas VY. to trans- 
late into Latin various of the writings of Aristoteles, 
the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, and also Theophrastos’ 
Natural History of Plants. Gaza died in Rome in 
1478, and the translation appeared first at Trevisa in 
1483. The work contains notes on the structure, hab- 
