The Agrostis of Diodorus would apply to all the Graminaceæ whose stems and roots contain nutritive and saccharine principles. Let us here remind the reader that the sugar-cane belongs to the same family as barley and the dog's-tooth.
Pliny is much more explicit. What he says of the Gramen (or grass), the "commonest of herbs"—inter herbas vulgatissimum—and of the geniculated spaces between its knots (geniculatis serpit internodiis), applies with tolerable accuracy to our Triticum repens. He also speaks of the diuretic properties of a decoction from its trailing roots.[34] As for his Gramen aculeatum (or needle-like grass), it is positively our Cynodon dactylon. "The five spurs or needles which shoot out," he says, "from the top of the stem, have procured it the name of Dactylon." To these digitiform spikes he attributes the property of checking the bleeding of the nose, when they are introduced into the nostrils. But a thorn is much better fitted to produce this effect; the spikes of the digitated panicle of the Cynodon dactylon are much too soft to determine epistaxis by a mechanical action. So it is not improbable that they owe their putative virtue to their colouring, which is not unlike that of blood, and which has even procured for the species the name of Digitaria sanguinalis. In the same manner the capricious mediæval imagination pronounced liverwort, with its marbled leaves, a sovereign remedy for diseases of the lungs,—organs remarkable for their marbled appearance.
Dioscorides is quite as explicit as Pliny. What the latter names Gramen, he, however, calls Agrostis. After having particularised the nodosities of the stem—a feature common to nearly all the Graminaceæ—he describes very clearly the long creeping roots put forth by the said stem; and he does not forget to mention the sugary savour, so characteristic of the rhizomes (ῥίζας γλυκείας) of the Triticum repens.[35] Theophrastus confines himself to indicating the Agrostis as a herb which infests the fields.[36]
The Cynodon dactylon is, at the present day, very common in Greece, where it is specially partial to low grounds, which are somewhat damp and sandy. The inhabitants call it Agriada, a name derived from ἄγριος, "wild." But if we may believe Fraas, the author of a Flora Classica, the genuine dog's-tooth, Triticum repens, is, on the contrary, very rare in the land of Socrates. This is a curious fact, if a fact, for geographical botany.
Throughout the Middle Ages, and down to the eighteenth century, were confounded, under the generic name of Gramina, or grasses, the most diversely-featured herbs, including the dog's-tooth. Tabernæmontanus, Dodonné, Mathiole, Jean and Gaspard Bauhin, were the first to attempt the clearing of a path through this intricate wilderness. They eulogised, at the same time, the emollient properties of the dog's-tooth.
Tournefort[37] and Bernard de Jussieu, who appear to have made a chemical analysis of it, pretend that the roots of the dog's-tooth contain a large quantity of oil, earth, and several acid liquids, as well as a little fixed salt. "According to all appearance," they add, "the roots act by means of a salt analogous to salt of coral, enveloped in a great deal of sulphur."
Instead of mocking us with such fantastic analyses, which can only excite the laughter of our modern chemists, Tournefort and Bernard de Jussieu would have deserved better of science if they had applied themselves to the task of introducing light and order into the cloudy chaos of the Graminaceæ of the botanists of their age.
But winter is passing away, and the time for the singing of birds is at hand. Already the earth is awakening from her prolonged lethargy; the hedgerows are green with budding leaves; the purple crocuses shine in many a sheltered field; on bank and brae, in glen and vale, the glory of the primrose makes glad the heart of man; the wood anemone hangs its delicate head in the woodlands; and it seems as if a gladder feeling animated the universal nature.
And the heart and the brain and the soul sympathise in this apparent delight of material things; the heart beating more freely, the brain feeling a stronger working power, and the soul rising to purer views of life and its duties:—