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VII. On the Lycium of Dioscorides. By John Forbes Rovle, Esq., F.L.S., 

 late Superlntendant of the Hon. East India Company's Botanic Garden at 

 Saharunpore. 



Read January 15th, and February 5th, 1833. 



X HE identification of the plants which constituted the Materia Medica of 

 the Greeks has so long been a subject of interesting research to the most able 

 naturalists, that any attempt to define what they have left imdetermined, or 

 to discover what has eluded their researches, and, still more, to differ in opi- 

 nion, wlien they seem most clearly to have elucidated a doubtful point, may 

 seem to many an act of presumption. But this will not appear so, when it is 

 considered that the Materia Medica of the ancients, like that of the present 

 day, was supplied by a variety of countries ; and that it is only as these have 

 been investigated by naturalists that the plants which afford medicinal articles 

 have been ascertained : and as some countries still remain unexplored, the 

 plants which yield us valuable substances, such as myrrh, in use from the 

 most ancient to the present times, still remain undiscovered. 



The success which has attended the investigations of Clusius, Ksempfer, 

 Tournefort and Sibthorp, who, to a knowledge of Botany, added that of the 

 authors who have written on the Materia Medica of the Greeks, and then 

 travelled in the countries where the same plants continue to be produced, 

 encourages further inquiries in other countries, whence many articles are said 

 to have been brought to the Greeks and Romans. 



India is one of the most remote of these countries, and that which has been 

 within a few years so much investigated as to allow of a very good idea being 

 formed of at least its vegetable productions. Little, however, has yet been 

 done with respect to its Materia Medica ; but from the success which attended 

 the efforts of Sir William Jones and Mr. Colebrooke in making out some of 

 the plants affording medicinal articles, much may be hoped from the attention 

 of others being directed to the same interesting field of inquiry. Having been 



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