502 PLINY'S K AT ORAL Hi.STo.nr. [Book XXITT. 



it taken in drink is curative of dropsy. Gnats are kept at a 

 distance by the smoke of burnt pomegranate rind. 



CHAP. 62. (7.) PEAKS: TWELVE OBSERVATIONS UPON THEM. 



All kinds of pears, as an aliment, are indigestible, 65 to 

 persons in robust health, even ; but to invalids they are for- 

 bidden as rigidly as wine. Boiled, however, they are re- 

 markably agreeable and wholesome, those of Crustumium 66 

 in particular. All kinds of pears, too, boiled with honey, are 

 wholesome to the stomach. Cataplasms of a resolvent nature 

 are made with pears, and a decoction of them is used to dis- 

 perse indurations. They are efficacious, also, in cases of poi- 

 soning 67 by mushrooms and fungi, as much by reason of their 

 heaviness, as by the neutralizing effects of their juice. 



The wild pear ripens but veiy slowly. Cut in slices and 

 hung in the air to dry, it arrests looseness of the bowels, 

 an effect which is equally produced by a decoction of it taken 

 in drink ; in which case the leaves also are boiled up together 

 with the fruit. The ashes of pear-tree wood are even more 

 efficacious 69 as an antidote to the poison of fungi. 



A load of apples or pears, however small, is singularly 

 fatiguing 69 to beasts of burden ; the best plan to counteract 

 this, they say, is to give the animals some to eat, or at least 

 to shew them the fruit before starting. 



CHAP. 63. FIGS : ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN OBSERVATIONS 



UPON THEM. 



The milky juice of the fig-tree possesses kindred properties 

 with vinegar; 70 hence it is, that, like rennet, it curdles milk. 

 This juice is collected before the fruit ripens, and dried in the 

 shade ; being used with yolk of egg as a liniment, or else in 

 drink, with amylum, 71 to bring ulcers to a head and break 



65 This depends considerably, as Fee says, upon the kind of pear. 



66 See B. xv. c. 16. 



67 There is no truth whatever in this statement. 



68 They are equally inefficacious for the purpose. 



69 See B. xxiv. c. 1. An absurdity, upon which Fee has uselessly ex- 

 pended a dozen lines of indignation. 



70 In reality it has no affinity with vinegar or any other acid, and the 

 fact that it curdles milk is no proof whatever that such is the case. 



71 See B. xviii. c. 17. 



