found very little that would improve the text.4 The date of Vaticanus 1302 is disputed. Devreese and Gianelli put it as early as the twelfth century,5 but Diels" thinks that it is as late as the fourteenth. The other two manuscripts both belong to the fifteenth century. Heinsius claimed that he had made use of a Heidelberg manuscript, but this statement has been disputed.7
The first appearance of the treatise On Stones in printed form is in the Aldine edition8 of the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus published at Venice from 1495 to 1498 and reprinted there in 1552. The first Latin translation of the treatise appeared in Paris in 1578 ; this was the work of Turnebus, who had already published the corresponding Greek text in 1577. This was followed by the edition of Furlanus, published in 1605 at Hanover, containing the Greek text of some of the works of Theophrastus together with a Latin translation and a commentary. And in 1613 a Greek and Latin edition of his works was published by Heinsius at Leyden. This is an unsatisfactory edition which has been severely criticized by both Schneider and Wimmer. Some emendations of die text of the treatise were published by Salmasius (Claude de Saumaise) in 1629 in his Plinianae Exercitationes.9 In 1647 De Laet published at Leyden an annotated Greek and Latin edition of the treatise On Stones; this appeared at the beginning of his work De gemmis et lapidibus libri duo, which was published as a supplement to the third edition of De Boodt's famous Gemmarum et lapidum historia. It is not strictly an independent publication of the treatise.
The first edition in which the text appeared as a single work, as well as the first translation into any modern language and the first extensive commentary, was published by Hill in 1746 at
4 Schneider, J. G., ed., Theophrasti Eresii quae supersunt opera (Leipzig, 1818-1821), Vol. V, p. 146.
5 We are indebted to the Vatican Library for this information.
β See Diels, H., "Aristotelis qui fertur de Melisso Xenophane Gorgia libellus," Abhandlungen der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Philosophisch-historische Classe (1900), p. 5.
7 Sir Arthur Hort says that "this claim appears to be entirely fictitious." Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants (London and New York, 1916), p. xii.
8 The full titles of the various editions mentioned here are listed at the end of this Introduction.
9 A later edition of this work has been consulted, namely, Salmasius, C., Plinianae Exercitationes in Caii fulii Solini Polyhistora (Utrecht, 1689).
