254 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



much of the farinhig of the Georgics is described from Virgil's own 

 knowledge, and how much is taken from those shrewd old writers 

 J)e re riisfica, Cato and Varro. Cato's home was at Tusculum, on 

 the eastern spurs of the Alban hills, whilst Varro had an estate near 

 the same place and another at Cumae : hence they describe farming 

 as practised in central — not in northern or southern — Italy, a limita- 

 tion contirmed by the internal evidence of their writings. Columella's 

 fuller treatise, on which commentators chiefly rely to inierpret the 

 Georgics, is later than Virgil's own works. 



But we cannot confine the plants of Virgil, as distinct from his 

 agriculture, to the native flora of Italy alone. We must search for 

 tiiem among those known to his model, the Sicilian Theocritus, and 

 above all among those commonly grown in Roman gardens of the 

 time. And here, if lioman taste were similar to that of the modern 

 Italians, we shall expect to find that scent — sweet, aromatic, or 

 pungent — was the chief attraction. The high esteem in which scent 

 was held may explain the use of the name Viola for the sweet-scented 

 stock as well as for the sweet violet, which to us seems so strange a 

 confusion of unlikes. 



We fear that Mr. Sargeaunt's book falls between two stools ; it is 

 not thorough enough for the botanist, Avho wants bibliographies and 

 references and evidence of the determinations laid down ; whilst for 

 the non-botanical reader, to whom plant-names convey no connotation, 

 the accounts of the species are not clear and striking enough to 

 convey distinct ideas — indeed, to make Virgil's flora thoroughly in- 

 telligible to such readers nothing short of figures of some kind would 

 surtice. 



Exclusive reliance on Arcangeli's handbook for the distribution 

 of Italian species and for their modern names has resulted in not a few 

 errors as to the former, and to one or two absurdities in the latter, 

 as when Pino di Scozia (Scotch fir) is given as the Italian name of 

 Finns silvestris. The reader must be warned that the Tuscan 

 popular names given by Arcangeli and for the most part taken from 

 Targioni-Tozzetti's Dizionario Botanico are not only not current, 

 but would be unintelligible in the greater part of Italy. A graver 

 fault is the lack of distinction between determinations that are practi- 

 cally certain and others that are only probable, or sometimes very 

 doubtful. For instance, Baccar is unhesitatingly^ identified with 

 Cifclamen europcsum : this is the opinion of Bertoloni, who saj^s that 

 in the hills of Brescia that species is known as haccare. On the other 

 hand, heccare and heccaro are used of other plants — e. g., Specularia 

 Speculum, Venus' Looking-glass — in other districts. The word is 

 obviously the Greek j^utcKapis, of which Dioscorides says that it is 

 OafMw^tjs, fvwltjs k-at GTe(pnpu)TiK)'i. Pliny's chapter on J^«cc«r shows 

 tliat he did not know what the name really meant. Perhaps the 

 ancients like the moderns used it of sundry quite unrelated plants, 

 and it is a matter of pure speculation what Virgil intended, if 

 indeed he intended anything more than to introduce in his verse 

 a sound like that of a musical Greek word. 



Cytisus is usually, as in this book, taken to mean Medicago 

 arhorea. This, however, is a rare shrub in Italy, thought by Fiori 

 (in Fl. Anal, d' Italia) only to exist there as a naturalized alien. 



