4

quote a few words from Theophrastus, which may serve to connect him with the future history of the science, as bearing upon one of the many problems respecting the identification of ancient and modern plants. It has been made a question whether the following description does not refer to the potato. He is speaking of the differences of roots: Some roots,' he says, 'are still different from those which have been described; as that of the arachidna plant for this bears fruit under-ground as well as above: the fleshy part sends one thick root deep into the ground, but the others, which bear the fruit, are more slender and higher up, and ramified. It loves a sandy soil, and has no leaf whatever.'

The books of Aristotle and Theophrastus soon took the place of the Book of Nature in the attention of the degenerate philosophers who succeeded them. A story is told by Strabo concerning the fate of the works of these great naturalists. In the case of the wars and changes which occurred among the successors of Alexander, the heirs of Theophrastus tried to secure to themselves his books, and those of his master, by burying them in the ground. There the manuscripts suffered much from damp and worms; till Apollonicon, a book-collector of those days, purchased them, and attempted, in his own way, to supply what time had obliterated. When Sylla marched the Roman troops into Athens, he took possession of the library of Apollonicon; and the works which it contained were soon circulated among the learned of Rome and Alexandria, who were thus enabled to Aristotelize on botany as on other subjects.

The library collected by the Attalic kings of Pergamus, and the Alexandrian Museum, founded and supported by the Ptolemies of Egypt, rather fostered the commentatorial spirit than promoted the increase of any real knowledge of nature. The Romans, in this

Theoph. i. 11.

5 Most probably the Arachnis hypogæa, or ground-nut.

6 Strabo, lib. xiii. c. 1, § 54.

7 Αριστοτλίζειν.

as in other subjects, were practical, not speculative. They had, in the times of their national vigour, several writers on agriculture, who were highly esteemed; but no author, till we come to Pliny, who dwells on the mere knowledge of plants. And even

in Pliny it is easy to perceive that we have before us a writer who extracted his information principally from books. This remarkable man,8 in the middle of a public and active life, of campaigns and voyages, contrived to accumulate, by reading and study, an extraordinary store of knowledge of all kinds. So unwilling was he to have his reading and note-making interrupted, that, even before day-break in winter, and from his litter as he travelled, he was wont to dictate to his amanuensis, who was obliged to preserve his hand from the numbness which the cold occasioned, by the use of gloves.9

It has been ingeniously observed, that we may find traces in the botanical part of his Natural History, of the errours which this hurried and broken habit of study produced; and that he appears frequently to have had books read to him and to have heard them amiss. 10 Thus, among several other instances, Theophrastus having said that the plane-tree is in Italy rare, Pliny, misled by the similarity of the Greek word (spanian, rare), says that the tree occurs in Italy and Spain.12 His work has, with great propriety, been called the Encyclopædia of Antiquity; and, in truth, there are few portions of the learning of the times to which it does not refer. Of the thirty-seven Books of which it consists, no less than sixteen (from the twelfth to the twenty-seventh) relate to plants. The information which is collected in these books, is of the most miscellaneous kind; and the author admits, with little

8 Sprengel, i. 163.

9 Plin. Jun. Epist. 3, 5. 10 Sprengel, i. 163.

11 Theoph. iv. 7. "Ev μèv yàp τῷ ̓Αδρίᾳ πλάτανον οὐ φασὶν εἶναι πλῆν περὶ τὸ Διομήδους,

ἱερόν, σπανίαν δὲ καὶ ἐν Ιταλίᾳ πάσῃ.

12 Plin. Nat. Hist. xii. 3. Et alias (platanos) fuisse in Italia, ac nominatim Hispania, apud auctores invenitur.

distinction, truth and errour, useful knowledge and absurd fables. The declamatory style, and the comprehensive and lofty tone of thought which we have already spoken of as characteristic of the Roman writers, are peculiarly observable in him. The manner of his death is well known: it was occasioned by the eruption of Vesuvius, A.D. 79, to which, in his curiosity, he ventured so near as to be suffocated.

Pliny's work acquired an almost unlimited authority, as one of the standards of botanical knowledge, in the middle ages; but even more than his, that of his contemporary, Pedanius Dioscorides, of Anazarbus in Cilicia. This work, written in Greek, is held by the best judges 13 to offer no evidence that the author observed for himself. Yet he says expressly in his Preface, that his love of natural history, and his military life, have led him into many countries, in which he has had opportunity to become acquainted with the nature of herbs and trees. 14 He speaks of six hundred plants, but often indicates only their names and properties, giving no description by which they can be identified. The main cause of his great reputation in subsequent times was, that he says much of the medicinal virtues of vegetables.

We come now to the ages of darkness and lethargy, when the habit of original thought seems to die away, as the talent of original observation had done before. Commentators and mystics succeed to the philosophical naturalists of better times. And though a new race, altogether distinct in blood and character from the Greek, appropriates to itself the stores of Grecian learning, this movement does not, as might be expected, break the chains of literary slavery. The Arabs bring, to the cultivation of the science of the Greeks, their own oriental habit of submission, their oriental love of wonder; and thus, while they swell the herd of commentators and mystics, they produce no philosopher.

Yet the Arabs discharged an important function in

13 Mirbel, 510.

14 Sprengel, i. 136.

the history of human knowledge,15 by preserving, and transmitting to more enlightened times, the intellectual treasures of antiquity. The unhappy dissensions which took place in the Christian church had scattered these treasures over the East, at a period much antecedent to the rise of the Saracen power. In the fifth century, the adherents of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, were declared heretical by the Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431,) and driven into exile. In this manner, many of the most learned and ingenious men of the Christian world were removed to the Euphrates, where they formed the Chaldean church, erected the celebrated Nestorian school of Edessa, and gave rise to many offsets from this in various regions. Already, in the fifth century, Hibas, Cumas, and Probus, translated the writings of Aristotle into Syriac. But the learned Nestoriaus paid an especial attention to the art of medicine, and were the most zealous students of the works of the Greek physicians. At Djondisabor, in Khusistan, they became an ostensible medical school, who distributed academical honours as the result of public disputations. The califs of Bagdad heard of the fame and the wisdom of the doctors of Djondisabor, summoned some of them to Bagdad, and took measures for the foundation of a school of learning in that city. The value of the skill, the learning, and the virtues of the Nestorians, was so strongly felt, that they were allowed by the Mohammedans the free exercise of the Christian religion, and intrusted with the conduct of the studies of those of the Moslemin, whose education was most cared for. The affinity of the Syriac and Arabic languages made the task of instruction more easy. The Nestorians translated the works of the ancients out of the former into the latter language: hence there are still found Arabic manuscripts of Dioscorides, with Syriac words in the margin. Pliny and Aristotle likewise assumed an Arabic dress; and were, as well as Dioscorides, the foundation of instruction in all the Arabian academies; of which a great number were established throughout the Saracen empire, from Bokhara in the remotest east, to Marocco

15 Sprengel, i. 203.

and Cordova in the west. After some time, the Mohammedans themselves began to translate and extract from their Syriac sources; and at length to write works of their own. And thus arose vast libraries, such as that of Cordova, which contained 250,000 volumes.

The Nestorians are stated 16 to have first established among the Arabs those collections of medicinal substances (Apotheca), from which our term Apothecary is taken; and to have written books (Dispensatoria) containing systematic instructions for the employment of these medicaments; a word which long continued to be applied in the same sense, and which we also retain, though in a modified application (Dispensary).

The directors of these collections were supposed to be intimately acquainted with plants; and yet, in truth, the knowledge of plants owed but little to them; for the Arabic Dioscorides was the source and standard of their knowledge. The flourishing commerce of the Arabians, their numerous and distant journeys, made them, no doubt, practically acquainted with the productions of lands unknown to the Greeks and Romans. Their Nestorian teachers had established Christianity even as far as China and Malabar; and their travellers mention 17 the camphor of Sumatra, the aloe-wood of Socotra near Java, the tea of China. But they never learned the art of converting their practical into speculative knowledge. They treat of plants only in so far as their use in medicine is concerned,18 and followed Dioscorides in the description, and even in the order of the plants, except when they arrange them according to the Arabic alphabet. With little clearness of view, they often mistake what they read: 19 thus when Dioscorides says that ligusticon grows on the Apennine, a mountain not far from the Alps; Avicenna, misled by a resemblance of the Arabic letters, quotes him as saying that the plant grows on Akabis, a mountain near Egypt.

16 Sprengel, i. 205.

18 Ib. i. 207.

17 Sprengel, i. 206.

19 Ib. i. 211.