BOOK XIX: Lx. 1S5-LX11. 187 



It is only used for the table mixed with pearl-barley, 

 which gives it a softer and niore agreeable flavour. 

 The wild variety suppHes a nuniber of drugs. (And 

 so careful has research been to overlook nothing, 

 that I actually find it stated in a poem " that if the 

 seeds of leek, rocket, lettuce, parsley, endive and 

 cress are planted enclosed in hoUow pellets of goat's 

 dung, each seed in a separate pellct, they come up 

 wonderfully. With plants of which there is also a 

 wild variety, the latter are thought to be more dry 

 and acrid than the cultivated sort.'') 



LXI. Now we ought also to speak of the difference of ■^«'«a <>/ 

 the juices and flavours of herbs,this being even greater 

 in their case than in fruits."^ The juice of savory, 

 wild marjoram, cress and mustard has an acrid taste; 

 the juice of wormwood and centaury is bitter, that of 

 cucumbers, gourds and lettuces watery ; that of 

 thyriie and cunilago pungent ; that of parsley^ dill 

 and fennel pungent and scented. The only flavour 

 not found in plants is the taste of salt, though 

 occasionally it is present as a sort of external layer, 

 like a dust, and this only in the case of the chickUng 

 vetch. 



LXII. Andtoshowhowunfounded,assofrequently, Fiavoursof 

 is the view ordinarily held, all-heal has the taste of '"^ ** 

 pepper, and still more so has pepperwort, which conse- 

 quently is called pepper-plant ; and grass of Lebanon 

 has the scent of frankincense, and alexanders that 

 of myrrh. About all-heal enough has been said ^ii. 127. 

 already. Libanotis grows in thin powdery soil, and Lecokia 

 in places where there is a heavy dew ; it 

 the root of ohisatrum, exactly Hke frankincense ; 

 when a year old it is extremely whok^some for the 

 digestion. Some people call it by another name, 



539 



