DIVI BOTANICI. 183 



brave Trojan warrior who was slain in one of those sanguinary con- 

 flicts which wrought his country's utter devastation. His dead 

 body suffered the indignity of being stripped of its armour on the 

 field of battle, and his shield was afterwards deposited as a trophy 

 in the temple of Juno at Argos, by the king Menelaus who had 

 won the high-valued spoils by their owner's slaughter. Thus it is, 

 that men reputed wise and great see glory in the destruction of 

 their fellow-men, during that stage of the social system when the 

 Mind has not discovered the natural supremacy of its moral senti- 

 ments, but exults in yielding a ready submission to the impulses of 

 its own animal instincts. 



By the annalists of primaeval transactions, the inquisitive natu- 

 ralist is left unacquainted with facts or incidents which might jus- 

 tify him in concluding that, like other co-eval military chiefs, the 

 Trojan Euphorbus was eminent for his knowledge of plants, or skil- 

 ful in their medicinal applications. Neither, in ancient memorials, 

 is it stated that the name of this personage was ever conferred on 

 any vegetable, for any reason, notwithstanding his celebrity ranks 

 high on the records of heroical renown. With regard to Euphor- 

 bus the physician, however, his position stands distinctly the re- 

 verse. It has been drawn concisely, but comprehensively, in the 

 sketches of Pliny the naturalist ; and, in being delineated by an 

 almost cotemporary hand, these sketches would be founded on state- 

 ments considerately weighed with a view to faithfulness of repre- 

 sentation. While enumerating the African nations geographically, 

 he introduces this descriptive account : — " Juba, the first prince who 

 reigned over both the Mauritanian kingdoms and acquired extraor- 

 dinary fame as a philosopher, relates in his natural history of Mount 

 Atlas that the herb Euphorbia grows there, and was so denominat- 

 ed in honour of his physician, by whom the plant was discovered." 

 Again, in that section of his work which consists of philosophical 

 commentaries on the nature of vegetables sponte nasceniium, the 



lated by Pliny the naturalist, from legendary chronicles. In one of the pro- 

 phet's ecstacies, actual or assumed, his body was taken for dead and consum- 

 ed on a funeral pyre, by his family. — For support of his psychological delu- 

 sion, Pythagoras courageously asserted his soul's recollection of many ex- 

 ploits achieved by Euphorbus, while it inspirited that hero's body ; and, with 

 a similar aim, the "divine instructor" practised the experiment of pointing 

 out the Trojan's shield in the temple, where it had remained for ages, at first 

 sight and without assistance ! Such fables are not uninstructive : they con- 

 stitute a lofty beacon to the Mind, by displaying the wild recklessness of 

 imagination when it escapes from control of the moral principle. 



