ENQUIRY INTO PLANTS, IV. iv. 8-11 



date-palms. So much for what come under the 

 heading of 'trees.' 



These lands bear also peculiar grains, some like 

 those of leguminous plants, some like wheat and 

 barley. For the chick-pea lentil and other such 

 plants found in our country do not occur ; but there 

 are others, so that they make similar mashes, and 

 one cannot, they say, tell the difference, unless one 

 has been told. They have however barley wheat ^ 

 and another kind of wild barley,- which makes sweet 

 bread and good porridge. VVhen the horses^ ate 

 this, at first it proved fatal to them, but by degrees 

 they became accustomed to it mixed with bran and 

 took no hurt. 



But above all they sow the cereal called rice, of 

 which they make their mash. This is like rice-wheat, 

 and when bruised makes a sort of porridge, which is 

 easily digested ; in its appearance as it grows it is 

 like darnel, and for most of its time of growth it is * 

 in water ; however it shoots ^ up not into an ear, but 

 as it were into a plume,^ like the millet and Italian 

 millet. There was another plant ^ which the Hel- 

 lenes^ called lentil; this is like in appearance to 

 ' ox-horn ' (fenugreek), but it is reaped about the 

 setting of the Pleiad. 



Moreover this country shews differences in that 

 })art of it bears certain things which another part 

 does not ,' thus the mountain country has the vine 

 and olive and the other fruit-trees ; but the olive is 

 barren,^ and in its character it is as it were almost 

 between a wild and a cultivated olive, and so it 



5 cLToxf^T-ai ■ cf. 8. S. 1. 6 c/. 8. 3. 4. 



" Phaseolns Mumjo ; see Index App. (8). 

 * I e. of Alexander's expedition. • ® Plin. 12. 14. 



319 



