ARISTOTELES. 5 



in the child-like stage of plant lore, the older races 

 had passed it, and were successful cultivators of 

 plants that had required much study to turn to use. 

 But the Greeks soon made amends, and the teacher 

 of Alexander the Great, Aristoteles, tried to 

 arrange plants, and to classify them according to 

 their peculiarities. Plants and herbs had been long 

 used as medicine, and the poisonous properties of 

 aconite had been employed to destroy one of the 

 noblest men of old, before this time, so that this 

 celebrated naturalist had the knowledge, which had 

 been accumulating for centuries, to put in order and 

 to arrange. 



Aristoteles was born at Stageira, in the year 

 384 B.C., and it is interesting to note that his 

 wonderful love of nature was fostered by, and, 

 indeed, probably arose from the profession of his 

 father. His father was the physician and friend 

 of Amyntas, King of Macedonia, and his mother 

 was a descendant of the great physician .^Escu- 

 lapius. The young Aristoteles lost both his 

 parents at an early period of his life, but the son 

 of Amyntas, called Philip, was his friend, and kind 

 people brought the boy up. We know nothing of 

 the boy's habits or method of life ; but it can be 

 readily understood by those who read these lives, 

 and have had a love of nature, before the ex- 

 perience of such a calamity as the loss of parents, 

 that many an hour of sorrow was shortened and 

 solaced by studying the graceful and blooming 

 plants and the movements and habits of animals. 



