Enquiry into Plants

in extracting the Theophrastean plants, he was also frequently successful. But the flora of Greece and the neighboring regions, being obscure at that time, drove a man of such great learning to anxiously seek refuge in plants that were even American. Nor is it surprising that those things which were perceived by Theophrastus regarding the internal structure of plants, the laws of vegetation, and the mystery of sex escaped a man deprived of all the aids by which we are supported. He accepted the Heinsian text. He added to the margin the various readings of the second Aldine, the Basel [edition], though more negligently; then his own conjectures, as well as those of Scaliger, Constantinus, and Salmasius: some of which he defends or refutes in his notes. He placed Gaza’s version, corrected by Heinsius with his own emendations added in the margin, opposite the text. He placed the animadversions of Scaliger and Constantinus before his own. The images are truly obscure and uncertain, presenting the largest and smallest plants at the same size. Moldenhawer.

N. B. These images are almost all from Gerard’s Herbal, corrected by Johnson. London. 1633.

VI.

Theodorus Gaza presented a Latin version of the History of Plants at the suggestion of Pope Nicholas V. This truly demonstrates the great acuteness of this man and his command of both languages. Yet because he wishes to follow the order and construction of the words too closely, he is frequently dense and little Latin. That the long-term observation of plants alone reveals what hindered the man is not at all surprising to one who weighs the circumstances of that age. Many have complained that he erred frequently in the division of the chapters, which he was the first to institute. He used only one codex, and that a corrupt one [b]; yet one superior to the Aldine [editions], unless everything is to be attributed to conjecture [c].