HISTORY OF BOTANY. 5 l 
himself the merit of pursuing farther the career of the celebiated 
Lesbian. This was Dioscorides, a native of Anazarbe in Cilicia. 
He lived in the first century after the birth of Christ. Medicine was 
his profession. He was the first who bestowed the utmost attention by 
enquiring into the medicinal properties of plants. He made them the 
objeft of several travels through various provinces in Europe and Asia. 
His work on the medical virtues of the plants *, which rendered him 
the literary father of the Materia Medica , remains as a valuable monu- 
ment of his greatness. His travels into remote countries had enabled 
him to make more observations than Theophrastus. He described 
upwards of 600 plants. 
The Greeks were in all sciences, especially in natural history, and in. 
the scientifiic representation of botany, the original predecessors 
and teachers of the Romans, their conquerors. The latter, at the 
most flourishing epochs of their universal monarchy devoted them- 
selves more than ever to the Muses. The less known and less culti- 
vated goddess Flora, found only among them one great votary, who, 
by his meritorious exertions, preserved his name even beyond the giave. 
This was Pliny the elder, of Verona , a man universally eminent in 
Roman literature, and especially in natural history. The large classical 
work which he wrote on this subjeft is principally appropriated to the 
vegetable reign, which it occupies from the nth to the 19th book. In 
point of rich colleHions and keen observations he excelled all the 
Greeks. By his own avowal, his natural history is a compilation from 
* lied £*»« ’^XK> de Materia Medica, lib. vi. first published by A. Manuce at Venice, 
1490 in folio ; afterwards by J. A. SarACENUS at Frankfort, 1598, folio. The most mo- 
dern and best edition is by the late Baron Von Kollar, Vienna, *770, with plates. 
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