Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/82

66 assist us in fixing yet more precisely the character of the singular work which engages our attention.

It is Dr. Chwolson himself who shall furnish the means of our doing so. One of Dr. Chwolson’s merits indeed is to have drawn attention to the fact that “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture” is not the only work of its kind, and that we possess three other works of the same nature, all translated by Ibn Wahshíya. The first of these books, the or “Book of Poisons;” is composed of three works, which according to Dr. Chwolson, have been blended together by Ibn Wahshíya. The authors of the three works are Súhab-Sáth, Yarbúká, and Rewáthá; Súhab-Sáth is more ancient than Yarbúká, and Yarbúká is quoted in “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture.” All the peculiarities, therefore, which denote Yarbúká to be an author of