28 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



more and more numerous. By their means the history 

 of cultivated plants is perfected, while the assertions of 

 ancient authors lose instead of gaining in importance. 

 From the discoveiies of antiquaries and philologists, 

 moderns are better acquainted than the Greeks with 

 Chaldea and ancient Egypt. They can prove mistakes 

 in Herodotus. Botanists on their side correct Theo- 

 phrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny from their knowledge of 

 the flora of Greece and Italy, while the study of classical 

 authors to which learned men have applied themselves 

 for three centuries has already furnished all that it has to 

 give. I cannot help smiling when, at the present day, 

 savants repeat well-known Greek and Latin phrases, and 

 draw from them what they call conclusions. It is trying 

 to extract juice fiom a lemon which has already been 

 repeatedly squeezed. We must say it frankl}^ the works 

 which rei)eat and commentate on the ancient authors 

 of Greece and Rome without gi^'ing the first place to 

 botanical and aichseological facts, are no longer on a 

 level with the science of the day. Nevertheless, I could 

 name several German works which have attained to the 

 honour of a third edition. It would have been better to 

 reprint the earlier publications of Fraas and Lenz, of 

 Targioni and Heldreich, which have always given more 

 weiojht to the modern data of botany, than to the vague 

 descriptions of classic authors ; that is to say, to facts 

 than to words and phrases. 



