Natural History (1875) - Page 11

And in these books I—VI, we have

I. OF THE OLDER ORDER

one most excellent codex, though neither complete nor—as is to be expected—free from faults:

A: The Leiden Vossian codex, fol. no. IV, written at the end of the IXth century in Anglo-Saxon script, with its origin traced to an exemplar once kept in Britain (as may be conjectured), which had preserved a fuller and purer text in many places than the archetype of the more recent order. This codex now contains, on 30 leaves in two columns, the following parts: II 196 — III 65. 92—IV 76. 86—107. 117—V 25. 125—136. VI 40—51, with the leaves that had been interspersed having been lost. At the end of book IV, there stands the subscription: Feliciter Iunius Laurentius relegi. It was corrected in some places by a hand not much later (A²) from the very exemplar, as it seems, from which it had been transcribed, and rarely by a third, more recent hand (A³). Sillig was the first to use it, employing a collation that Nauta had made; Detlefsen collated it anew.

Closely approaching this, due to a certain undoubted commonality of origin—though one which can scarcely be demonstrated distinctly—are some excerpts made in the Middle Ages in that same Britain. In that land, as illustrious examples teach us, learned men at that time studied the work of Pliny diligently and, as if drawing from a most abundant fountain of precious knowledge, diverted it into their own rivulets. Such examples include the Venerable Bede, who borrowed entire chapters from Pliny and inserted them into his own books, and others, concerning whom Rück has briefly treated in the program of the Ludwig Gymnasium of Munich, a. 1903, p. 5 sqq. Of this type are:

m: The 'Eboracensia' astronomical excerpts from books II and XVIII, edited on the authority of ten codices (4 from Munich, 1 from Vienna, 1 from Montpellier, 2 from Bern, 2 from Paris) by Karl Rück in the booklet inscribed 'Auszüge aus der Naturgeschichte des C. Plinius Secundus in einem astronomisch-komputistischen Sammelwerke des 8. Jahrhunderts' (progr. gymn. Ludov. Monac. a. 1888) p. 34—50. The excerpts taken from book II, grouped under four titles, contain on p. 34—43: a) §§ 12. 32. 34—36. 38—44, b) §§ 83. 84, c) §§ 59—61. 69. 70. 63. 64, d) §§ 62. 67—69. 71. 75—78. 80. 78. 79. 76. 77. Regarding other codices containing almost the same excerpts, especially two Harleian and one Cottonian, cf. Rück in the acts of the Bavarian Academy of Letters, a. 1898 II, p. 204—209.
y (i): Astronomical, physical, and geographical excerpts from books II, III, IV, VI, which from two codices, the Vossian Latin