414 PRINCIPLES OF BOTANY, ETCe 
history. ‘This philosopher, however, has paid moté 
attention to the rest of the kingdoms of nature thar 
to the vegetable Aingdont He lived soon after Hip- 
pocrates. 
Theophrastus was born at Eresus in the island of 
Lesbos about 300 years before Curist. ‘Though 
he lived upwards of 8» years, he still complained of 
the shortness of human life. He was a pupil of 
Plato and Aristotle, and so great a favourite of the 
last, that he became the heir of his library, and his 
successor in the peripatetic school. Of ail those 
which we have named, he was best acquainted with 
botany. In his work* he has given us the descrip- 
tion of more than 500 plants. ‘They are, however, — 
only officinal plants, the use of which he has very 
accurately explained. 
The Romans, likewise, after their victory over 
Mithridates, began to study this branch of natural 
history. 
Marcus Cato wrote 149 years before CurisT on 
medicine, and the remedies used in it. 
Marcus Terentius Varro lived at the time of the 
emperor Augustus, and wrote chiefly on farming. 
Pedanius or Pedacius Dioscorides, born in Asia, at 
Anagarba in Cicilia, paid extreme attention to the’ 
investigation of the medical powers of the vegetable 
* Tet Qurov icrogiag. There area great many Latin transla- 
tions of this work; the last is Theophrasti Eresii Historia 
Plantarum. Lib. IX. cum commentariis J. L. Scaligeri et 
J. Bodaei a Stapel. Amstel. 1644. fol. 
kingdom. 
