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The influence of Theophrastus in fixing the names of plants 

 is well summed up in the following passage: 



"Pliny, the supreme Latin writer about plants, in translating 

 Theophrastan texts by the hundred into Latin for Roman readers, 

 made use of familiar Latin names in place of the Greek names 

 when there were such, e. g., instead of the Greek itea he wrote 

 salix; in place of drys, quercus; Latin ulmus, sambucus, and 

 ranunculus in place of Theophrastan ptelea, acte, and batrachium. 

 There were still many scores of plant types which were known to 

 Latins by no other names than those that had been assigned 

 them in Greek; another evidence that Theophrastus by his books 

 had been the one teacher and authority upon botany to Latins as 

 well as Greeks. Platanus, cerasus, rhamnus, anemone, thalictrum, 

 delphinium, helleborus, paeonia, and a host of other such re- 

 mained the only names of the genera, whether one spoke or wrote 

 in Latin or in Greek; and so during some seventeen centuries 

 most of the plant names in use were quoted from Theophrastus. 

 The popular fable about Linnaeus as first nomenclator of botany 

 is not yet a hundred years old, and will need to be perpetuated 

 for sixteen centuries yet to come if the years of his nomenclatorial 

 fame are to equal those during which Theophrastus held the 

 prestige." 



As a particular instance of the Theophrastan conception of 

 genera Dr. Greene cites the four species of water-lilies for which 

 recent writers use the names Nymphaea lutea, Castalia alba, 

 Castalia Lotus, and Nelumho speciosa — species which Linnaeus 

 grouped in the single genus Nymphaea, although Theophrastus 

 had them under the four names Nymphaia, Sida, Lotos, and 

 Cyamos, respectively. Referring to the generic relationships of 

 these four plants. Dr. Greene remarks, . . . "recent systematists 

 have well-nigh completely returned to the Theophrastan view, 

 in all save the names of genera; and the restoration of even these 

 will follow under the law of priority." It will hardly be denied, 

 we think, that, although the botanists of the present generation 

 may profit by some instruction as to the merits of Theophrastus, 

 very few of them will feel any necessity, either moral or practical, 

 for adopting the botanical language of the Greeks to any greater 

 extent than they have already adopted it through inheritance. 

 And, in the opinion of the reviewer, the prevailing sentiment of 

 the botanists of the present day in this particular is likely to be 



