PREFACE 



but mechanical labour. And he has greatly increased 

 my debt and the reader's by reading the proofs of 

 my translation and of the Index. This is perhaps 

 the place to add a note on the translation of the 

 plant-names in the text : where possible, I have 

 given an English equivalent, though I am conscious 

 that such names as ( Christ's thorn,' ' Michaelmas 

 daisy ' must read oddly in a translation of a work 

 written 300 years before Christ ; to print Linnean 

 binary names would have been at least equally 

 incongruous. Where an English name was not 

 obvious, although the plant is British or known in 

 British gardens, I have usually consulted Britten 

 and Holland's Dictionary of Plant-names. Where 

 no English equivalent could be found, i.e. chiefly 

 where the plant is not either British or familiar in 

 this country, I have either transliterated the Greek 

 name (as arakhidna) or given a literal rendering of it 

 in inverted commas (as ' foxbrush ' for dAwTrocov/DOs) ; 

 but the derivation of Greek plant-names being often 

 obscure, I have not used this device unless the 

 meaning seemed to be beyond question. In some 

 cases it has been necessary to preserve the Greek 

 name and to give the English name after it in 

 brackets. This seemed desirable wherever the author 

 has apparently used more than one name for the 

 same plant, the explanation doubtless being that he 

 was drawing on different local authorities; thus Ke'pcuros 

 and Xaxdpij both probably represent 'bird-cherry,' 

 the latter being the Macedonian name for the tree. 



