orchis. 213! 



the early Romans believed it to be the food of the 

 Satyrs, and that it excited them to those excesses to 

 which fabulous history describes them as being so 



much addicted. 



In mythology, the Satyri are represented as 

 demi-gods, who chiefly attended upon Bacchus; 

 but Pliny speaks of them, from report, as animals 

 which inhabited a part of India (book vii. chap. 2). 

 It is related by Pausanias, Plutarch, and other an- 

 cient historians, that a Satyr was brought to Sylla, 

 as that general returned from Thessaly ; the mon- 

 ster was taken alive, and is stated to have answered 

 in every degree to the descriptions given of the 

 Satyrs by the painters and the poets. We read, 

 also, that Sylla was so disgusted with the sisht 

 of the monster, that he ordered it to be instantly 

 removed. 



The Orchis root being represented as the fa- 

 vourite diet of the imaginary Satyrs, it naturally 

 became celebrated as one of the most stimulating 

 medicines known, and it is so described by all 

 medical writers on simples, from Dioscorides down 

 to the present day : but most of these accounts 

 are too ridiculous and indelicate to transcribe, and 

 we trust that they will be so far disregarded as not 

 to shut this beautiful plant out of the gardens of 

 this enlightened age ; nor would we debar the 

 student in medicine from ascertaining the real 



VOL. I. t. 



