88 Mr. Rovrz on the Lycium of Dioscorides. 
having been by the older botanists called Lycium, are certainly in favour of its 
being the plant yielding one kind of Lycium. 
It is remarkable, however, that the genus Berberis, of which one species, as 
before mentioned, was supposed by Prosper Alpinus to be Lycium, possesses so 
many of the same properties as some species of the genus Rhamnus. Spina 
Appendix, Oxyacanthos, Amyrberis and Crespinus are the names given to the 
common Barberry by Pliny, Galen, Avicenna and Matthiolus. The fruit is 
a mild astringent acid ; the leaves have similar properties, but in a less degree. 
The young bark is said to be purgative, and was formerly given in jaundice. 
The bark and wood, both of the stem and root, are yellow, bitter and styptic, 
and have been employed as astringents. The root contains a yellow colouring 
matter, sufficiently abundant * to be employed for dyeing flax, cotton and wool, 
and to give a lustre to prepared leather. It is found also in every part of 
Europe, and in the western parts of Asia, from Portugal to Georgia, and from 
Crete to Norway, occurring in the plains in northern latitudes, and on moun- 
tains in the south, as on Lebanon. Its geographical distribution, therefore, is 
not incompatible with that of Lycium, while Berberis cretica is chiefly found in 
the islands: one species is moreover called Berberis buxifolia. It is singular 
that a plant so remarkable as the Barberry for its conspicuous flowers, pecu- 
liar odour, acid fruit and leaves, thorny nature, and yellow wood, should not be 
noticed by Dioscorides, if it was then, as now, an inhabitant of the same loca- 
lities. It may, perhaps, be more than au accidental coincidence, that the old 
English name of Barberry is Pepperidge-bush, and that the fruit of Lycium is 
compared by Dioscorides to that of zéxeg:, which is always translated ‘pepper’. 
From everything that has been yet adduced, it is evident that considerable 
uncertainty still prevails respecting the plant producing the Lycium of Asia 
Minor, while that which afforded the original and most efficacious kind im- 
ported from India has hardly been hinted at ; for the opinion of Garcias ab 
Orto that Acacia Catechu was the plant, is unsupported by any proof, and is 
incompatible with the writings of Oriental authors to be afterwards adduced. 
If we suppose that the same plant produced the Lycium of India and of Lycia, 
* Vide analysis by Brande, Bulletin des Sciences Médicales de Férussac, tom. vi. p. 186. Vauquelin 
has further proved, that few woods are superior to that of Berberis tinctoria, a variety of B. asiatica, 
for dyeing yellow. 
