Revieivs — Old Natural Hidory Boohs. 471 



"After many vicissitudes, which included burial in a catacomb, 

 the remains of the combined MSS. of Aristotle and Theophrastus 

 passed into the hands of Apellicon of Teos [ -B.C. 85], who 

 attempted their restoration and had them copied. The transcripts 

 were afterwards seized by Sylla and conveyed to Rome, where they 

 were subsequently edited and given to the world by Andronicus of 

 Ehodes; but their real publication dates from 1495, when they 

 were tirst printed in the original Greek by the celebrated Venetian 

 printer Aldus Manutius. A Latin translation by T. Gaza of 

 Theophrastus' Be historia et causis Plantarum had, however, been 

 printed at Treviso in 1483. 



" Geology, or more strictly speaking, physical geography, first 

 received serious attention at the hands of Stkabo [b.c. 63?-a.d. 24], 

 who originated the theory of the alterations of the level of the land 

 in relation to the sea, in contradistinction to the former belief in the 

 changes of the sea-level.^ His GeograpMcon, which was written in 

 the early years of the Christian Era, was printed, from the Latin 

 translation, at Venice in 1472 by Vindelinus de Spira, and appeared 

 in the original Greek in 1516 from the press of Aldus Manutius, 



"The oldest popular natural history book, and almost encyclo- 

 paedia, was the Sistoria Naturalis, also termed the Historia Mundi, 

 of Pliny thk elder [a.d. 23-79]. This voluminous treatise in 

 thirty-seven books has been preserved, and presents an epitome of 

 the state of Roman knowledge on the subject. The number of 

 known plants had by this time increased to about one thousand, and 

 the belief in the existence of sexes in plants had become established; 

 while in the minerals the ' earths ' had been made into a class apart 

 from ' metals ' and ' stones.' It was probably the earliest work on 

 natural history to be printed, the editio princeps emanating from 

 J. de Spira's press at Venice in 1469. 



"The next most important work was the celebrated Materia 

 Medica of Dioscorides [a.d. 40?- ]. This was a standard book 

 for over a century, and was the basis for most of the early herbals. 



"It was first printed at Medemblik, Holland, in 1478, from 

 a Latin translation, made by Hermolaus Barbarus. The Greek 

 editio princeps, from the press of Aldus Manutius, at Venice, 

 appeared in 1499. The work became the subject of much discussion, 

 and of many Commentaries by early botanists of the Renaissance, 

 especially P. A. Mattioli [1500-1577] and his contemporaries, 

 who, ignorant of the differences between the floras of East and 

 West Europe, were led into endless difficulties in their attempts to 

 identify their plants from the imperfect definitions of Dioscorides. 



" The three Greek writers, Hippocrates, Theophrastus, and 

 Dioscorides, are the authorities for all the Greek names of plants 

 up to the Christian era. 



"With the epoch of Pliny and Dioscorides the classical period of 

 natural history may be said to have been brought to a close : the 

 works of the older writers became less studied in Europe, and 



^ It is most probable that Ovid derived orally from Strabo the ideas which he 

 attributes to Pythagoras in the oft-quoted passages from his "Metamorphoses." 



