Ancient Latin Agricultural Writers, Vol. I

...no less than the other books printed before Victorius, contains ten: I thought it was an error of someone or other, and I did not deem it necessary to record the reason for it in the variant readings.

III. And indeed, we have made a great part of the notes of Meursius into a summary. For I thought it approached insanity to transcribe an annotation that would fill one or two lines, from which the reader would learn nothing other than what had already been indicated clearly enough above by a brief note of one or two letters. And this was done with a purpose that no one will easily disapprove of. But you will also look in vain, Reader, for certain other notes—both of Meursius and Popma—in their proper places, if you happen to look for them: the reason for this must be given here, so that no one takes it otherwise than intended. We had decided at the beginning to divide everything that pertained to the illustration of these writers into four classes, as it were: to place the variety of readings in the first class, in the manner we have followed; in the second, the shorter annotations by which the meaning would be rendered clearer, and to place these immediately beneath the words of the authors; to assign more extensive discussions to the third, by which either the reasoning for a reading would be rendered or the subject matter itself would be explained more fully; and finally, to collect in an index everything that pertained to the meaning and usage of individual words. However, other considerations have not allowed us to maintain that method—which we still judge to be the best and most suitable for every kind of reader, and which I see the illustrious Boerhaave recently used in part in his Aretaeus—and it happened as it is in the