Only a fragment of the last of ten books on plants written by Theophrastus has come down to us. The writings made such an impression on the students that their general bearing has been transmitted, and the main points are as follows. Theophrastus classified plants by the manner in which they were reproduced, the localities where they were found, their size, as trees or shrubs or herbs, and according to their uses, as furnishing juices, pot-herbs, and seeds that may be eaten. The first book treated of the parts of the plant—the root, stem, leaves, flower, and seed, and the second of the manner in which plants seed, and the proper times for sowing seeds, and how to sow. In this part he mentions that some plants, evidently of the same kind, have seed and others not, or that there are different sexes in plants, the female bearing the seed. That he was a practical observer is proved by his writings on the method of the reproduction in the great palm trees, which are such striking features in the East. Moreover, he studied the way in which figs grew and the seed became fertile, and he compared the reproduction of the fig with that of the palm tree. The third, fourth, and fifth books are devoted to a consideration of trees, their various kinds, the places they come from, and the economical uses to which they may be applied. The sixth book treats of winter shrubs and spring plants; the seventh of pot-herbs; the eighth of plants yielding seeds used for food; and the ninth of those plants that yield useful juices, gums, resins, and other exudations. The love of the marvellous, however, creeps in here and there, and amongst good facts there are very considerable “tough yarns;” but these come from the old soldiers of Alexander the Great. There is one thing most interesting in the works of this man, and it is the desire he had to make his knowledge useful to mankind. This is especially noticed in another work on the causes of plants, of which six parts remain to the present day. It is really a work on gardening and farming, with a good deal of pure and applied knowledge on botany. It is not everybody, nowadays, that can combine what is scientific, that is to say, exact knowledge, with useful and applied knowledge. Too frequently the scientific botanist does not teach gardening or farming; and certainly, as a rule, the writers on these last subjects are not scientific botanists, and, indeed, they are often of a very different kind of mind. It has been said of the works of Theophrastus that there is much valuable matter in them that deserves the attention of the botanist, and that a very little knowledge of botany will enable the reader to separate the chaff from the wheat. So noted was the learning of this great man on other subjects, that his good work on plants remained the text-book of centuries; and, in fact, little or no satisfactory knowledge about plants, beyond that given to us by Aristoteles and Theophrastus, was discovered for many centuries.