DIVI BOTANICI. 



195 



lations. Melissa had discovered a method of collecting and purify- 

 ing honey, for alimental purposes ; and, as she participated in her 

 sister's concern for their extraordinary foster-child, she furnished 

 him from her stores with abundance of delicious sustenance. For 

 these acknowledged services, her meed and their memorial were 

 determined by the devotion of naturalists : they consecrated the 

 princess* to be queen of the bees by giving her name to the honey- 

 making insect, and they honoured her still farther by enjoining 

 the rule, that Melissa's herb should denominate the balmy vegetable 

 on which the bee is fond of exercising its melliferous industry. 



Melissa the Plant— This is the Balm, one of the labiated 

 family of vegetables, " a most natural order having the herbage 

 usually aromatic, often bitter, always harmless." Most of the pri- 

 mitive phytologists, both poetical and medical, evince an acquaint- 

 ance with " the fragrant Balm that lures the bee," in that they 

 severally distinguish the plant by some appropriate term which 

 commemorates the fair one's fame, in whose honour the insect and 

 the flower were first denominated. From the ancients, a knowledge 

 of the plant and its reputed properties was transmitted to the Ara- 

 bian doctors ; and, through their compositions, it descended succes- 

 sively to the modern herbalists and the physicians, who generally 

 agree in communicating information as the fruit of varied experi- 

 ence, often less actual however than imaginary. 



Balm with its citron-scented blossoms, has been immemorially 

 considered the source of a fragrant principle peculiarly agreeable 

 to the bee, and of a cordial energy adapted, by exhilarating the 

 " heart of man," to relieve his mind from the miseries of nervous- 

 ness and melancholy. With the other elements of his pastoral 

 illustrations, Theocritust introduces the " odoriferous balm" with 

 its buds ever-grateful to the bee ; and for its being an ingredient in 

 his antidote to poisons and the venom of serpents, Nicander+ com- 



• By every appearance, the appellation mxieea. the bee, and mxitfipvxx,* 

 the bee-herb, Melissa's plant, derived their originals from that of the Cretan 

 princess, on account of her discovery of honey and its sources : from her own 

 name being the same as her father's in the feminine form, an additional testi- 

 mony may be entertained in favour of this construction. 



t Theocriti, Simmies, Moschi, Bionis et Musai qua extant, cum notis ; acce- 

 dunt Theognidis, Phon/lidis, Pythagara, Solonis, aliorumque poemata giwmica; 

 qrmri, et laHml ; Sco, Parisiis, lC27—Theocrilus was a Sicilian, and flourish- 

 ed about the end of the third century before the christian era: his works 

 were first printed in the original ; Jolio, Mcdiotnu, 1480: in ln.s Idyls I & h 

 under the term Ma-r«<«, he speaks of the Balm and its fragrant emanations. 



t Niaimhi Theriaca ci AkHphamaca, groat >i html, mterpnte Jo. Gorrwo, 



