BOOK XXI. xciv. 165-166 



The flower never opens except when the wind is 

 blowing, a fact to which it owes its nanie." The 

 wild anemone is the larger, and its leaves are broader,^ 

 the flower being scarlet. Many have been misled 

 into identifying the wild anemone with the arge- 

 mone, others again with the poppy that I have called 

 rhoeas." But there is a great difference between 

 them, because these two blossom after the anemone, 

 which does not yield a juice hke theirs, has not their 

 calyx,*^ and there is no likeness except the head Hke 

 asparagus. Anemones are good for headache and 

 inflammations, for uterine complaints and for lacteal 

 troubles.'' They also promote menstruation when 

 taken with barley water or used on a wool pessary. 

 The root chewed brings away phlegm, is heahng to 

 the teeth,/ and when boiled down to fluxes of the 

 e)'es and to scars. The Magi have attributed to the 

 anemones a kind of mystic potency, recommending 

 that the plant which is first seen should be taken up 

 in that year with the utterance that it is being 

 gathered as a remedy for tertian and quartan agues ; 

 after this the blossoms must be wrapped up in ? a 

 red rag and kept in the shade, and so be used, should 

 occasion arise, as an amulet. If the crushed root of 

 the anemone bearing a scarlet flower be applied to 

 the skin of any Hving creature, it produces a sore by 

 reason of its astringent quahties, and for this reason 

 it is employed for cleansing ulcerous sores. 



are therefore attractive, especially as lucte accusative would 

 naturally be changed to lacli by an ignorant scribe, and with 

 the received punctuation quoqve comes in with a jerk. The 

 sense however is much the same either way. 



•^ Possibly, " cures toothache." 



' Or, " bound together with," unless we read, as Mayhoff 

 suggests, lignri. 



279 



