Plinius laboured for many years at natural history and the other sciences, and he was a most diligent collector of information. A warrior and a statesman, yet he contrived to write a vast number of works, his books on natural history alone amounting to twenty-seven volumes. He appears to have known all that it was possible to know at his age of the world, and yet there was no great amount of new work put into his books. It has been very properly said that the loftiness of his ideas and the nobleness of his style enhance still more his profound learning. Naturally, as he copied much from other writers, and especially, in one part of botany which relates to medicine, from an author named Dioscorides, he could not examine into the truth of every statement which had been made. Hence Plinius retailed some curious stories now and then, which are more amusing than true; but, on the whole, he established, on solid grounds, the learning of his own and previous ages. This active-minded man, who lived in luxury and had great responsibilities, is an example to many of the same class who do not care to enjoy the study of the beautiful nature around them. He lost his life whilst endeavouring to sustain the courage of his friends, during the great eruption of Vesuvius, when the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed. He was on shore at the time, and probably was suffocated by noxious fumes. The name of Dioscorides has been mentioned as that of an author known to Plinius; he was born in Cilicia, at Anazarbus, and flourished during the reign of the Emperor Nero. Nothing is known about his early life, but it appears that he was a soldier, and possibly connected with the surgical and medical art in the army. Certain it is that he travelled over many countries—Greece, Italy, Gaul, and Asia Minor—gathering plants and studying, not so much their structures and mutual resemblances and differences, as their medical or healing powers. He obtained plants from travellers in India, and learned the merits of herbs and drugs from many nations. He wrote on the substances used in medicine in a Materia Medica, and named and briefly described between five and six hundred medicinal plants. Unfortunately Dioscorides wrote in a careless manner, and there is much nonsense mixed up with truth in his writings. But he was of use; he was not merely a student of the beauties of nature, but of the value of certain plants to man in his pain and trouble, and he founded the science of medical botany.