142 THE TREES AND SHRUBS [LECT. 



than from four to five hundred years. In accuracy 

 of information Theophrastus and Aristotle both 

 greatly exceed Pliny, whose work, although in- 

 valuable as a Cyclopaedia, bears evident marks of 

 being a compilation, and not the result of original 

 research. 



The Romans, indeed, seemed to have acted to- 

 wards the Greeks, as our mediaeval writers did 

 towards the ancients, and instead of observing for 

 themselves, were contented with copying from pre- 

 ceding authors, whose statements had with them 

 the force and authority of ocular demonstration. 



Thus there is often a remarkable similarity be- 

 tween the descriptions of plants given by Pliny and 

 Dioscorides, shewing either that one copied from 

 the other, or that both derived their information 

 from some common source. Yet neither writer 

 ever alludes to the other, unless Pliny may be sup- 

 posed to do so in a passage of his 36th Book, 

 c. 37, where, after describing a stone called Schistos, 

 possessing medicinal virtues in diseases of the eye, 

 much in the same terms as Dioscorides does in his 

 5th Book, c. 145, he adds, " Heec est sententia 

 eorum, qui nuperrime scripsere." Pliny, indeed, is 

 very copious in his citations of antecedent authors, 

 but perhaps at the time when he drew up his list, 

 Dioscorides had not risen into that celebrity which 

 he afterwards obtained, as being the writer who 

 has handed down to us the fullest account of the 

 simples employed by the ancients. 



Nevertheless it seems to be pretty well ascer- 



