INTRODUCTION. 1 1 



trievably lost. For the two books upon plants, 

 which are found in the present editions of his 

 works, are generally allowed by the best judges to 

 be altogether spurious, and regarded as being a 

 forgery of some learned Arab of the middle ages, 

 afterwards translated into Greek. 



The loss that was thus sustained is in a great Theo- 

 measure compensated by the works of Theophrastus 

 the disciple and successor of Aristotle, and prince of 300 ' 

 ancient botanists; who imbibing or inheriting from 

 his master an ardent desire of prosecuting the study 

 of the works of nature, applied himself to the in- 

 vestigation of the vegetable kingdom with a zeal 

 and industry worthy of the pursuit, and produced 

 as the result of his labours the two works on plants 

 for which he stands so deservedly celebrated the 

 one entitled n^\ 3?vTuv t I<rTogia$, the other n^l $UTWI/ Hisbota- 

 ''Amwy. In the former work he describes and ar- 

 ranges plants according to such characters and dis- 

 tinctions as had then engaged the attention of 

 botanists ; and in the latter he professes to account 

 for the phenomena of vegetation ; though, in truth, 

 the topics of examination are introduced without 

 any thing of systematic method, or at least without 

 any method calculated to throw light on the sub- 

 ject. The specific descriptions, which amount to 

 about five hundred, if compared with modern de- 

 scriptions, are vague and incorrect ; and few of the 

 phenomena of vegetation are satisfactorily explained. 

 But with all their defects still they are works of in- 



ments - 



