UNSYSTEMATIC KNOWLEDGE. 293 



have said already." He then proceeds to describe 

 some remarkable circumstances respecting the fer- 

 tilization of the date-palms in Assyria. 



This curious and active spirit of the Greeks led 

 rapidly, as we have seen in other instances, to at- 

 tempts at collecting and systematizing knowledge 

 on almost every subject : and in this, as in almost 

 every other department, Aristotle may be fixed 

 upon, as the representative of the highest stage of 

 knowledge and system which they ever attained. 

 The vegetable kingdom, like every other province 

 of nature, was one of the fields of the labours of 

 this universal philosopher. But though his other 

 works on natural history have come down to us, 

 and are a most valuable monument of the state of 

 such knowledge in his time, his Treatise on Plants 

 is lost. The book De Plantis, which appears with 

 his name, is an imposture of the middle ages, full 

 of errors and absurdities 3 . 



His disciple, friend, and successor, Theophrastus 

 of Eresos, is, as we have said already, the first great 

 writer on botany whose works we possess ; and, as 

 may be said in most cases of the first great writer, 

 he offers to us a richer store of genuine knowledge 

 and good sense than all his successors. But we 

 find in him that the Greeks of his time, who aspired, 

 as we have said, to collect and systematize a body 

 of information on every subject, failed in one half 

 of their object, as far as related to the vegetable 



3 Mirbel, Bot unique, ii. 505. 



