Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/78

62 I leave the examination of the scientific theories of “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture” to those who are familiar with the history of the natural sciences. Such an examination will not be possible till the work of Kúthámí is published in its entirety. I shall only make one observation on this head: the classification of plants into cold and warm occurs incessantly in “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture.” It is known that this classification is later than Theophrastus, who, in that general theory, lays bare one basis of Greek Botany. I shall only point out to astronomical scholars two passages where there are allusions to the division of the zodiac into twelve signs, and to the seven planets. The philosophy of Kúthámí, indeed, is not of a character to bespeak great antiquity for the work in which it is found. This philosophy is a kind of monotheism, which induces the author to repudiate the established creeds of