INTRODUCTION
providing a critical text, founded not on the Aldine edition, but on comparison of the manuscripts then known; the Medicean and Viennese had been collated a few years before by J. Th. Schneider. We find also full use made of the ancient authors, Athenaeus, Plutarch, Pliny, Dioscorides, Nicander, Galen, etc., who quoted or adapted passages of Theophrastus, and copious references, often illuminating, to those who illustrate him as Varro, Columella, Palladius, Aelian, the Geoponica.
Spr. Kurt Sprengel, Halle, 1822. This is not an edition of the text, but a copious commentary with German translation. Sprengel was a better botanist than scholar; Wimmer speaks disparagingly of his knowledge of Greek and of the translation. (See note prefixed to the Index of Plants.)
W. Fr. Wimmer: (1) An edition with introduction, analysis, critical notes, and Sprengel's identifications of the plant-names; Breslau, 1842.
(2) A further revised text with Latin translation, apparatus criticus, and full indices; the Index Plantarum gives the identifications of Sprengel and Fraas; Didot Library, Paris, n.d.
(3) A reprint of this text in Teubner's series, 1854.
These three books are an indispensable supplement to Schneider's great work. The notes in the edition of
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