INTRODUCTION
supplied by the above conjecture. It is even possible that in one place (3. 12. 4.) the name of one of these students has been preserved.
Theophrastus, like his master, was a very voluminous writer; Diogenes gives a list of 227 treatises from his pen, covering most topics of human interest, as Religion, Politics, Ethics, Education, Rhetoric, Mathematics, Astronomy, Logic, Meteorology and other natural sciences. His oratorical works enjoyed a high reputation in antiquity. Diogenes attributes to him ten works on Rhetoric, of which one On Style was known to Cicero, who adopted from it the classification of styles into the 'grand,' the 'plain,' and the 'intermediate.'[1] Of one or two other lost works we have some knowledge. Thus the substance of an essay on Piety is preserved in Porphyry de Abstinentia.[2] The principal works still extant are the nine books of the Enquiry into Plants, and the six books on the Causes of Plants; these seem to be complete. We have also considerable fragments of treatises entitled:—of Sense-perception and objects of Sense, of Stones, of Fire, of Odours, of Winds, of Weather-Signs, of Weariness, of Dizziness, of Sweat, Metaphysics, besides a number of unassigned excerpts. The style of these works, as of the botanical books, suggests that, as in the case of Aristotle, what we possess consists of notes for lectures or notes taken of lectures. There is no literary charm: the sen-
