Enquiry into Plants

1842 are in the main critical, but the editor's remarks on the interpretation of thorny passages are often extremely acute, and always worth attention. The mass of material collected by Schneider is put into an accessible form. Wimmer is far more conservative in textual criticism than Schneider, and has a better appreciation of Theophrastus' elliptical and somewhat peculiar idiom, though some of his emendations appear to rest on little basis. A collation of the Paris manuscripts (P and P₂) was made for Wimmer; for the readings of U and M he relied on Schneider, who, in his fifth volume, had compared U with Bodaeus' edition. A fresh collation of the rather exiguous manuscript authorities is perhaps required before anything like a definitive text can be provided. Wimmer's Latin translation is not very helpful, since it slurs the difficulties: the Didot edition, in which it appears, is disfigured with numerous misprints.

(Sandys' History of Classical Scholarship (ii. p. 380) mentions translations into Latin and Italian by Bandini; of this work I know nothing.)

C. Other Commentators

Scal. J. C. Scaliger: Commentarii et animadversiones Commentaries and observations on the perì phytōn historía Enquiry into Plants posthumously published by his son Sylvius at Leyden, 1584. (He also wrote a commentary on the perì aitíōn On the Causes of Plants, which was edited by Robertus Constantinus and published...)