A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



for it his famous grouping into articulates, mollusks, 

 and radiates ; which grouping in turn was in part super- 

 seded later in the nineteenth century. 



What Aristotle did for the animal kingdom his pupil, 

 Theophrastus, did in some measure for the vegetable 

 kingdom. Theophrastus, however, was much less a 

 classifier than his master, and his work on botany, 

 called The Natural History of Development, pays com- 

 paratively slight attention to theoretical questions. 

 It deals largely with such practicalities as the making 

 of charcoal, of pitch, and of resin, and the effects of 

 various plants on the animal organism when taken as 

 foods or as medicines. In this regard the work of 

 Theophrastus is more nearly akin to the natural his- 

 tory of the famous Roman compiler, Pliny. It re- 

 mained, however, throughout antiquity as the most 

 important work on its subject, and it entitles Theo- 

 phrastus to be called the " father of botany." Theo- 

 phrastus deals also with the mineral kingdom after 

 much the same fashion, and here again his work is the 

 most notable that was produced in antiquity. 



