Enquiry into Plants

PREFACE.

Theophrastus, the author of the book on Plants, took his origin from Eresus on the island of Lesbos. A student of Plato from his tender years, and afterwards of Aristotle; and, in the course of time, a companion and friend, he took possession of the mantle of the deceased in the LYCEUM, with such great glory to himself that he was not only held in high esteem by the Athenians, but was pursued with the same veneration as the MASTER HIMSELF by CASSANDER and PTOLEMY, the successors of ALEXANDER THE GREAT. His writings appeared to the number of two hundred, as ^a is stated; of which there still exist, more or less, twenty: most celebrated, indeed, are the ten books on Plants; on the Causes of Plants, and likewise the Characters. Older than a centenarian, he deplored the brevity of human life; a span, as he says, granted longer to the crow and the stag than to man. This most ancient investigator of herbal science enumerated about four hundred plants, as they happened to present themselves to him in various peregrinations;—

^a Diogenes Laertius, in his Life.