150 



The present part of the "Landmarks", after the preface and the 

 introductory remarks on the "Philosophy of Botanical History", 

 includes nine chapters, with headings as follows: I. The Rhizo- 

 tomi; II. Theophrastus of Eresus, B. C. 370-286 (or 262); III. 

 Greeks and Romans after Theophrastus; IV. Introductory to the 

 Sixteenth-Century German Fathers; V. Otho Brunfelsius, 1464- 

 1534; VI. Leonhardus Fuchsius, 1 501-1566; VII. Hieronymus 

 Tragus, 1498-1554; VIII. Euricius Cordus, 1486-1535; IX. Val- 

 erius Cordus, 1515-1544. 



In the introductory chapter on the "Philosophy of Botanical 

 History", the author discusses in a very entertaining manner the 

 development of human ideas in regard to the plant world and the 

 early attempts to arrange these ideas in an orderly fashion. 

 "Botany", he says, "did not begin with the first books of botany, 

 nor with the men who indited them; though every historian of 

 the science whom I have read has assumed that it did. The 

 most remote and primitive of botanical writers, of whatever 

 country or language, found a more or less extensive vocabulary 

 of elementary botany in the colloquial speech of all". He then 

 goes on to show the baselessness of "the fond conceit" "that there 

 was never anything in the world that could be called science until 

 some three centuries ago, or four, at the farthest." 



Among the ancient Greeks were the rhizotomi, "mostly illiter- 

 ate men and quacks" whose root-gathering for medicinal pur- 

 poses was often accompanied by prayers, incantations, and other 

 curious ritual, but some of them studied the nature and properties 

 of plants in a scientific way and wrote books, which were quoted 

 by Aristotle and Theophrastus. One of these, Cleidemus, is said 

 to have "investigated diseases of plants, especially of the fig-tree, 

 olive-tree, and vine." Professor Greene pronounces him "the 

 earliest of vegetable pathologists". Another of these protobotan- 

 ical Greeks, whose writings are known to us only from excerpts 

 made by their more illustrious countrymen, was Hippon, con- 

 cerning whom the author of the "Landmarks" has the following 

 paragraph : 



"Hippon was among the rhizotomi who philosophized about 

 plants in general, and wrote books. His writings are quoted by 



