HISTOEICAL INTRODUCTION. 



A BRIEF introduction to the History of the Literature of 

 Botany is all that can be attempted, here ; for fuller details 

 recourse must be had to the volumes enumerated in section 2. 

 Tor our purposes we may consider the literature of botany 

 began with Theophrastus Eresios, for the fragments of Aristotle 

 which have survived the ravages of the centuries are too in- 

 significant to require our notice. Commencing then with 

 Theophrastus, born B.C. 371, we find in his irepi tSiv ^vtwv 

 i<TTopia a catalogue of plants, without any attempt at descrip- 

 tion, so that much of his work has simply ofiFered a text for the 

 conjectures of his commentators. His other work, aina (f>vcriKa, 

 shows the philosophical notions current at the time of writing, 

 for we must remember that Theophrastus was a prominent 

 peripatetic philosopher. 



Passing by several minor writers without special remark, 

 we arrive at the period of Dioscorides, in the first century. 

 Probably no other author mentioned in the following pages has 

 caused so much discussion and confusion among his followers. 

 His various treatises formed the staple of the discourses and 

 wranglings of the early botanists of the Renaissance, com- 

 mencing with Otho Brunfels in 1530, flourishing with 

 Matthioli and his contemporaries, and surviving in the 

 closing years of the eighteenth century, to furnish the younger 

 Sibthorp with strong inducements to prepare a Flora of Greece ; 

 the actual finish of that costly production taking place ia 

 1840. 



