BOOK XIII. XIX. 65-xxi. 69 



not join hands round the trunks ; and one of them 

 was particularly remarkable, not because of its fruit 

 or its utiUty for some purpose, but on account of the 

 circumstance that it has the appearance of a thorn, 

 but leaves resembUng wings, which when somebody 

 touches the branches at once fall off and afterwards 

 sprout again. 



XX. It is agreed that the Egyptian thorn suppHes EgypHan 

 the best kind of gum ; it is of a streaked appearance, ^"'"* 

 grey in colour, clean and free from bark, and it sticks 



to the teeth ; its price is 3 denarii per pound. The 

 gum produced from the bitter almond and the cherry 

 is inferior, and that from plum-trees is the worst 

 kind of all. A gum also forms in the vine which is 

 extremely valuable for children's sores, and the gum 

 sometimes found in the oUve-tree is good for toothache; 

 but the gums also found in the ekn on Mount Corycus 

 in CiUcia and in the juniper are of no use for anything, 

 indeed elm-tree gum there even breeds gnats. Also 

 a gum exudes from the sarcocoUa " — that is the name 

 of the tree and also of the gum — which is extremely 

 useful both to painters and to medical men ; it 

 resembles incense dust, and for the purposes men- 

 tioned the white kind is better than the red ; its 

 price is the one mentioned above. 



XXI. \Ve have not yet touched on the marsh-plants Papynis: 

 nor the shrubs that grow by rivers. But before we pa^!*^'^ 

 leave Egypt we shall also describe the nature of 

 papvrus, since our civiUzation or at aU events our 

 records depend very largely on the employment of 

 paper. According to Marcus Varro we ow^e even the 

 discovery of paper to the victory of Alexander the 

 Great, when he founded Alexandria in Egypt,before 

 which time paper was not used. First of aU people 



139 



