94 AUTHORITY OF THE ANCIENTS. 



hunt after the Agrcstis, a plant remarkable for its sweet 

 savour and the sufficient nourishment which it offers to 

 the wants of man. It is likewise considered an excellent 

 provision for cattle, from its fattening properties. It is in re- 

 membrance of these benefits that the inhabitants of Egypt, 

 when worshipping their gods, carry this plant in their 

 hand." 



The Agrostis of Diodorus would apply to all the Graminacecz 

 whose stems and roots contain nutritive and saccharine prin- 

 ciples. Let us here remind the reader that the sugar-cane 

 belongs to the same family as barley and the dog's-tooth. 



Pliny is much more explicit. What he says of the Gramen 

 (or grass), the " commonest of herbs " inter herbas vutgatis- 

 simum and of the geniculated spaces between its knots 

 (geniculatis serpit internodiis\ applies with tolerable accuracy 

 to our Triticum repens. He also speaks of the diuretic pro- 

 perties of a decoction from its trailing roots.* As for his 

 Gramen acukatum (or needle-like grass), it is positively our 

 Cynodon dactylon. "The five spurs or needles which shoot 

 out," he says, "from the top of the stem, have procured it 

 the name of Dactylon" To these digitiform spikes he attri- 

 butes the property of checking the bleeding of the nose, when 

 they are introduced into the nostrils. But a thorn is much 

 better fitted to produce this effect ; the spikes of the digitated 

 panicle of the Cynodon dactylon are much too soft to deter- 

 mine epistaxis by a mechanical action. So it is not impro- 

 bable that they owe their putative virtue to their colouring, 

 * Pliny, " Historia Naturalis," xxiv. 188. 



