[2518] It has in reality no such effect.
[2519] Probably the Fagonia Cretica and the Trapa natans of Linnæus. See B. xxi. c. [58]. The first, Fée remarks, is a native of Candia, the ancient Crete, and a stranger to the climates of Greece and Italy. This may account for Pliny calling it a garden plant.
[2520] This is said. Fée remarks, in reference to the Trapa natans, the seed of which is rich in fecula, and very nutritious.
[2521] “Contrahat ventrem.” It would not act, Fée says, as an astringent, but would have the effect of imparting nutriment in a very high degree, without overloading the stomach.
[2522] A harmless, or, perhaps, beneficial, superstition.
[2523] The synonym of this plant is probably unknown. Dalechamps identifies it with the Sagittaria sagittifolia, C. Bauhin with the Centaurea calcitrapa, and Clusius, Belli, and Sprengel, with the Poterium spinosum. None of these plants, however, are prickly and aquatic, characteristics, according to Theophrastus, of the Stœbe: Hist. Plant. B. iv. c. 11. Fée considers its identification next to impossible.
[2524] Probably the Hippophaës rhamnoides of Linnæus. This, however, Fée says, has no milky juice, but a dry, tough, ligneous root. Sprengel identifies it with the Euphorbia spinosa of Linnæus, on account of its milky juice; but that plant, as Fée remarks, does not bear berries, properly so called, and the fruit is yellow and prickly.
[2525] See B. xxvii. c. 66. It is identified by Fée with the Carduus stellatus or Centaurea calcitrapa of Linnæus, the common star-thistle.
[2526] As compounds of ἵππος, a “horse.” Hardouin, however, thinks that the names ἱπποφαὲς and ἱππόφαιστον have another origin, and that they are compounds of φάος, “lustre,”—from the brilliancy which they were said to impart to cloths—and ἵππος, in an augmentative sense, meaning “great lustre.”
[2527] See B. xxi. c. [55]. Only two species of the nettle, Fée remarks, were known to the ancients, the Urtica urens and the U. dioica; and these have been confounded by Pliny and other writers.