192 - NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
PARLATORE, M. Pu.: Mémoire sur le PAPYRUS des ANCIENS, ef sur 
le Paryrus de Sicile. Paris. 1853. 4to. Plate. 
We are only now in possession of this interesting Memoir of Pro- 
fessor Parlatore, intended to show that the Papyrus of Sicily, previously 
always considered (by Linnæus as well as others) the Papyrus of the 
ancients, is in reality specifically distinct. He was led to this investi- 
gation by an examination of Nubian specimens, gathered in 1844, by 
M. le Chevalier Figari, of Cairo, and which, together with a rich col- 
lection of Egyptian and Ethiopian plants, are deposited in the Herba- 
rium of the Museum of Natural History at Florence; and he came to 
the conclusion that the Sicilian plant was introduced into Sicily, pro- 
bably from Syria, a little before the tenth century, at the time of the 
dominion of the Arabs, and that the Papyrus of the Egyptians, now 
apparently almost lost to Egypt, is the same as that found in Nubia. 
In Syria the Sicilian Papyrus (Cyperus Syriacus) is found at Munskalia, 
on the borders of the Mediterranean, seven hours’ distance from Jaffa, 
and also abundantly near Acre and Sur (Tyre), where it is used for 
making mats, and between Kaiffa and Jaffa. Bruce’s figured plant 
represents the Egyptian Papyrus, which he says he collected in “Syria, 
from the river Jordan ; from two different places in Upper and Lower 
Egypt, from the Lakes Trana and Goodero, in Abyssinia ;” and these 
he declares to be intrinsically the same, only “he thought that the 
. plants of Egypt, the middle of the two extremes of country, were 
stronger, fairer, and fully a foot taller than those in Syria and Abys- 
sinia.” But Bruce had not an eye for botanical distinctions. The 
. C. Papyrus, an Egyptian species, is a tropical plant, recognized by the 
rays of the umbel always being erect, so as to form a broom-like head, 
and the great length of the involucres; while C. Syriacus, Parl., is 
known by the greater length of the rays of the umbel, and their 
spreading so as to form a globose head, with the involucres short. 
The plant, we believe, invariably in eultivation in England is therefore 
the Sicilian or Syrian species, C. Syriacus. We have ourselves ex- 
T amined specimens from the Montpellier Garden (Professor Gonau), and 
d native ones from the Congo, and from De la Goa Bay, South Africa, 
and these all prove to be the same as the Sicilian plant. 
