BOOK XXI. XXX. 55-xxxi. 57 



ivies and resembles the wild rose." But in these too 

 it is only the colour that pleases, as they have no 

 perfume. There are also two kinds of cneorum, a 

 dark and a white. The latter has perfume, and both 

 are branchy. They blossom after the autumnal 

 equinox. There are also two kinds of wild mar- 

 joram used for chaplets, one having no seed, and 

 the other, which has perfume, being called Cretan. 



XXXI. There are two sorts of thyme, the pale Tkymt. 

 and the darkish. Thyme blossoms about the sol- 

 stices when too the bees sip from it, and a forecast 

 can be made about the honey harvest. For the bee- 

 keepers hope for a bumper one if there be an abun- 

 dance of blossom. Showers damage it and make the 

 bk)ssom fall off. Tlie seed of thyme is impercep- 

 tible to sight, and yet that of wild mai'joram, although 

 very tiny, does not escape our eye. But what does 

 it matter that Nature has hidden it ? Reason tells 

 us that the seed is in the flower itself, and if that be 

 sown a plant grows from it. What have men left 

 untried ? Attic honey is thought more highly of 

 than any in the whole world. Thyme therefore has 

 been imported from Attica, and grown with diffic\ilty, 

 we are tokl, from the blossom. But a furtlier hin- 

 drance arose through another pecuUar characteristic 

 of Attic thyme, which will not survive in the absence 

 of sea breezes. Ihe same view indeed was held 

 of old about all kinds of tliyme, and people believed 

 that it was for this reason that it did not grow in 

 Arcadia, while the olive too, they thought, is only 

 found within three hundred stades from the sea. Yet 

 thyme we know today covers even the stony plains 

 of the province of GalHa Narbonensis, being almost 

 the only source of revenue, thousands of sheep being 



