[1691] Or “flower.”
[1692] It may be remarked, that in this Chapter Pliny totally confounds fixed oils, volatile oils, and medicinal oils. Those in the list which he here gives, and which are not otherwise noticed in the Notes, may be considered to belong to this last class.
[1693] The oleaster furnishes but little oil, and it is seldom extracted. The oil is thinner than ordinary olive oil, and has a stronger odour.
[1694] The Daphne Cneorum and Daphne Cnidium of botanists. See B. xiii. c. [35], also B. xxiv. c. 82. Fée doubts if an oil was ever made from the chamelæa.
[1695] See B. xxiii. c. 41: the Ricinus communis of Linnæus, which abounds in Egypt at the present day. Though it appears to have been formerly sometimes used for the table, at the present day the oil is only known as “castor” oil, a strong purgative. It is one of the fixed oils. The Jews and Abyssinian Christians say that it was under this tree that Jonah sat.
[1696] A “tick.”
[1697] This method, Fée says, is still pursued in America.
[1698] See B. xiii. c. [2]. One of the fixed oils.
[1699] An essential oil may be extracted from either; it is of acrid taste, green, and aromatic; but does not seem to have been known to the ancients. The berries give by decoction a fixed oil, of green colour, sweet, and odoriferous. The oils in general here spoken of by Pliny as extracted from the laurel, are medicinal oils.
[1700] The Laurus latifolia of Bauhin.