FOOTNOTES
[596] See Stapel, über die Pflanzen des Theophrast. p. 618. Salmasius ad Solinum, p. 159. Casauboni Animadv. in Athen. Lugd. 1621, fol. p. 146. Bauhini Hist. Plant. iii. p. 48.
[597] Colum. lib. x. ver. 235.
[598] Lud. Nonnii Diæteticon. Antv. 1646, 4to, p. 56.
[599] It was said, that if the corners of the seeds were bruised, no prickles would be produced. See Geopon. lib. xii. cap. 39. [It is a well-known physiological fact in botany, that many plants which are naturally spinous, when cultivated in gardens or rich soil, become unarmed. The production of spines seems to arise from an imperfect development of the growing point of a plant; when this development is increased by the greater supply of nutriment, the spines disappear, their places being supplied by a branch having leaves. We have instances of this in the apple, pear, &c., which are naturally spinous.]
[600] Geopon. l. c. Columella, xi. cap. 3.
[601] Geopon. 925, where repeated watering is directed; it is said you will then have tenderer fruit, and in more abundance.
[602] Virgil. Geor. i. 150. Plin. xviii. cap. 17.
[603] Palladius, iv. 9, p. 934, and lib. xi. Octob. p. 987. In the first-mentioned place he gives the same direction for preventing prickles, as that quoted respecting the cinara.
[604] Pliny, lib. xx. says, “The wind easily carries away the withered flowers on account of their woolly nature.”
[605] Κύναρος ἄκανθα πάντα πληθύει γύην.—Sophocles, in Phœnice.
... Segnisque horreret in arvis
Carduus...—Virgil. Georg. i. 50.
[606] Athen. Deipnos. at the end of the second book, p. 70. Salmasius, in his Remarks on Solinus, p. 159, is of opinion that Athenæus wrote κάρδον, not κάρδυον; and the Latins not carduus, but cardus.
[607] Lib. iii. cap. 19.
[608] Lib. xix. cap. 8.
[609] Arctium Lappa, an indigenous weed, difficult to be rooted out. Elsholz, in his Gartenbau, speaking of the Spanish cardoons, says, “The strong stem of the large burr, Arctium Lappa, may be dressed in the same manner, and is not much different in taste.” See also Thomas Moufet’s Health’s Improvement. Lond. 1746, 8vo, p. 217.
[610] Plin. lib. xxi. cap. 16.
[611] Theophrastus: “Conceptus non spinosus, sed oblongus.” But Dioscorides says, “Capitulum spinosum.” This contradiction, and other small variations, have induced some to consider the scolymus of Theophrastus and that of Dioscorides as two different plants.
[612] Dioscor. iii. 16.
[613] Dioscor. lib. iii. cap. 10, where he says of a plant that its leaves were like those of the Scolymus, and its stem like that of the Cinara.
[614] Rariorum Plantarum Historiæ, lib. iv. p. 153.
[615] “In Crete there is a kind of prickly plant, which in the common Greek idiom is generally called ascolimbros. The ancient Latins called it also by a Greek name, glycyrrhizon, though different from glycyrrhiza (liquorice). It grows everywhere spontaneously, has a yellow flower, and abounds with a milky juice. The roots and leaves are usually eaten before it shoots up into a stem. We saw it exposed for sale with other herbs in the market-place of Ravenna, and at Ancona, where the women who were digging it up, gave it the name of riuci. We saw it gathered also in the Campagna di Roma, where the inhabitants called it spinaborda. This is the plant which by the modern Greeks is named ascolimbros.”—Bellonii Observationes, lib. i. cap. 18. “In Crete it is called ascolymbros, and in Lemnos scombrouolo, that is scombri carduus. This thistle abounds with a milky juice, like succory, has a yellow flower, and is excellent eating; so that I know no root cultivated in gardens which can be compared to it in taste, the parsnip not even excepted.”
[616] Theophrast. Hist. Plant. p. 620. The figure which Stapel gives, p. 621, is not of the Scolymus hispanicus, but of Scolymus maculatus. It is taken from Clusius, who has also a figure of the former.
[617] “I considered the heads of these poor Greeks as so many living inscriptions, which preserve to us the names mentioned by Dioscorides and Theophrastus. Though liable to different variations, they will, doubtless, be more lasting than the hardest marble, because they are every day renewed, whereas marble is effaced or destroyed. Inscriptions of this kind will preserve, therefore, to future ages the names of several plants known to those skilful Greeks who lived in happier and more learned times.”—Voyage du Levant, i. p. 34. Compare with the above what Haller says in his Biblioth. Botan. i. p. 28.
[618] Plin. lib. xxi. cap. 16. See Theophrast. lib. vi. cap. 4. Theoocritus, Idyll. x. 4, mentions a lamb wounded in the foot by a cactus. Tertullian names this plant among prickly weeds, together with the rubus, in the end of the second chapter of that unintelligible book De Pallio. De la Cerda, in his excellent edition of Opera Tertulliani, Lutetiæ Paris. 1624, 2 vols. fol. i. p. 13, reads carecto instead of cacto; but Salmasius, in his edition of that work, p. 172, has sufficiently vindicated the latter.
[619] Dioscorid. Alexipharm. cap. 33.
[620] Theoph. p. 613.
[621] The creeping branches were in particular called cacti, the upright stem pternix.
[622] Theophrastus calls the bottom of the calyx περικάρπιον, a word which is still retained in botany. But he also says that the same part of the cactus was called also σκαλία; from which is derived the ascalia of Pliny. Galen calls it σπόνδυλον.
[623] Theoph. This term is explained by Pliny, lib. xiii. c. 4:—“Dulcis medulla palmarum in cacumine, quod cerebrum appellant.”
[624] Athen. Deipnos. at the end of the second book, p. 70. He gives everything to be found in Theophrastus; but either the author or some of his transcribers have so confused what he says, that it is almost unintelligible.
[625] Herm. Barbar. ad Dioscor. iii. 15.
[626] Manni de Florentinis inventis commentarium, p. 34.
[627] Politiani Opera. Lugd. 1533, 8vo, p. 444.
[628] Ruellius De Natura Stirpium. Bas. 1543, fol. p. 485.
[629] Hakluyt, vol. ii. p. 164. Biographia Britannica, vol. iv. p. 2462; and Anderson’s History of Commerce.
[630] Herm. Barbarus, in his Observations on Dioscorides.
[631] Salmas. ad Solin. p. 160.
[632] It is remarked in Golius’s Dictionary, p. 597, that this word signifies also the scales of a fish, and the strong scales of the calyx of the plant may have given rise to the name.
[633] The Greek word is αρτυτική.
[634] Glossarium Suiogothicum, i. p. 411.
[635] Potatoes.
[636] A variety of derivations may be found in Menage’s Dictionnaire Etymologique.
[637] See Rozier, Cours Complet d’Agriculture, vol. ii. p. 14.
[638] See his Travels. Geneva, 1681, fol. p. 164.