PREFACE
but mechanical labour. And he has greatly increased my debt and the reader's by reading the proofs of my translation and of the Index. This is perhaps the place to add a note on the translation of the plant-names in the text:—where possible, I have given an English equivalent, though I am conscious that such names as 'Christ's thorn,' 'Michaelmas daisy' must read oddly in a translation of a work written 300 years before Christ; to print Linnean binary names would have been at least equally incongruous. Where an English name was not obvious, although the plant is British or known in British gardens, I have usually consulted Britten and Holland's Dictionary of Plant-names. Where no English equivalent could be found, i.e. chiefly where the plant is not either British or familiar in this country, I have either transliterated the Greek name (as arakhidna) or given a literal rendering of it in inverted commas (as 'foxbrush' for ἀλωπέκονρος); but the derivation of Greek plant-names being often obscure, I have not used this device unless the meaning seemed to be beyond question. In some cases it has been necessary to preserve the Greek name and to give the English name after it in brackets. This seemed desirable wherever the author has apparently used more than one name for the same plant, the explanation doubtless being that he was drawing on different local authorities thus κέρασος and λακάρη both probably represent 'bird-cherry,' the latter being the Macedonian name for the tree.
