LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



birth from the day he met Aristotle. QTheo-Phrastus 

 means God's speech, or one who speaks divinely. The 

 boy's real name was Ferguson. But the name given 

 by Aristotle who always had a passion for naming 

 things stuck, and the world knows this superbly 

 great man as Theophrastus. 



Botany dates from Theophrastus. Theophrastus dedi- 

 cated one of his books, " To Aristotle, the inspirer ot 

 all I am or hope to be." 



FTER the death of Theophrastus the sci- 

 ence of Botany slept for three hundred 

 years. During this interval was played 

 that immortal drama in Palestine which 

 has influenced the world so profoundly. 

 Q Twenty-three years after the birth of 

 Christ, Pliny, the Naturalist, was born. He was the 

 uncle of his nephew, and it is probable that the younger 

 man would have been swallowed in oblivion, just as 

 the body of the older one was covered by the eager 

 ashes of Vesuvius, were it not for the fact that Pliny 

 the Elder had made the name deathless. Pliny the 

 Younger was about such a man as Richard Le Gal- 

 lienne ; Pliny the Elder was like Thomas A. Edison. 

 Q At twenty-two, Pliny the Elder was a captain in 

 the Roman Army doing service in Germany. Here he 

 made memoranda of the trees, shrubs and flowers he 

 saw and compared them with similar objects he knew 

 at home. " As you go North and South, animal and 

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