[979] Hist. Plant. lib. i. cap. 15.
[980] Lib. xvi. cap. 21.
[981] De Re Rustica, i. cap. 7.
[982] Lib. xvi. cap. 8.
[983] The botanists of the seventeenth century, who paid more attention to the names of the ancients than those of the present time, say that the cork-tree is in Greek called also ἴψος, or ἰψὸς, which word is not to be found in Ernesti’s dictionary. I have found it only once in Theophrastus, Histor. Plantar. lib. iii. cap. 6, where those plants are named which blow late. Because Pliny, lib. xvi. cap. 25, says tardissimo germine suber; ἰpψὸς is considered to be the same as φελλός. Hesychius however says that ἰψὸς in some authors signifies ivy.
[984] Our German word Kork, as well as the substance itself, came to us from Spain, where the latter is called chorcha de alcornoque. It is, without doubt, originally derived from cortex of the Latins, who gave that appellation to cork without any addition. Horace says, Od. iii. 9, “Tu levior cortice;” and Pliny tells us, “Non infacete Græci (suberem) corticis arborem appellant.” These last words are quoted by C. Stephanus in his Prædium Rusticum, p. 578, and Ruellius De Natura Stirpium, p. 174, and again p. 256, as if the Greeks called the women, on account of their cork soles, of which I shall speak hereafter, cortices arborum. This gives me reason to conjecture a different reading in Pliny, and indeed I find in the same edition already quoted, the words cortices arborum. This variation ought to have been remarked by Hardouin.
[985] Plin. p. 7.
[986] Mosella, 246.
[987] Linnæi Flora Suec. p. 358. Gmelin’s Reise durch Russland, i. p. 138. It is a mistake in Duroi, Harbkescher Baumzucht, ii. p. 141, that ropes for fishing-nets are prepared from this bark.
[988] Parkinson’s Voyage to the South Seas, 1773, 4to.