586 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. TanNO 1748. 



Dioscorides, who, by describing the plants he treats of too briefly, always 

 leaves their characters imperfect, says (perhaps after some other author more 

 ancient than himself) that the leaves of the plant in question are like those of the 

 olive-tree ; that its flowers are in bunches, and that its fruit is black, like that 

 of elder. This was enough to make the Latins conjecture, that the xwpo; of 

 this author was the ligustrum or privet; and the more so as the Cyprus was quite 

 unknown to them, since it only grew in Egypt and in Syria, where it was always 

 called henna, or alhenna, and by corruption alkanna. 



There is some appearance that, as the Greeks received a good quantity of 

 this drug from the Isle of Cyprus, as a species of merchandise, they would chuse 

 to ca\\ it Cyprus, rather than give it any other denomination, on account of the 

 quantity furnished to them from the isle of that name. 



Pliny took it first for a kind of privet or ligustrum, which grew parti- 

 cularly in Eg}'pt, and afterwards he thought it to be the common ligus- 

 trum of Europe : this shows how uncertain he was as to the plant in ques- 

 tion. He judged ill in comparing the fruit of the Cyprus with that of the 

 jujube-tree ; but was more happy in likening the fruit (capsule) to that of the 

 coriander, as they agree in colour, though that of the Cyprus was larger. 

 Matthiolus, who thought himself greatly above his contemporaries in the theory 

 of plants, asserts boldly, that this plant was the common privet : and in this he 

 thinks himself justified, not only from the description of Dioscorides, but from 

 the virtues attributed to the cyprus by Pliny. He even ridicules those who think 

 that the ligustrum and cyprus are different plants. Fuchsius, who wrote before 

 Matthiolus, had nevertheless reason to believe them of a different genus, by the 

 account given of the Egyptian plant by Pliny ; but he was wrong in confounding 

 it with the phillyrea of Dioscorides, and in this mistake he has been followed by 

 Dodonaeus. 



Bellonius, who had seen this plant in its place of growth, well knew that it 

 was not the ligustrum or privet : he saw also how the commentators of the Ara- 

 bian authors were deceived in taking it for such. 



Rauwolf and Prosper Alpinus, who met with it in their travels, after having 

 observed it in the places of its growth, believed, as Pliny had done, that it was 

 a kind of ligustrum, which approached very near to that of Europe. They have 

 each of them given a different figure ; which made Caspar Bauhin believe that 

 there must be 2 new species of ligustrum ; but herein he was not followed by 

 the ingenious Mr. Ray. In fact, we ought to acknowledge, by the characters 

 here set down, that our cyprus is of a genus truly different, and the only one of 

 its kind. 



The Hortus Malabaricus has given a figure of this plant under the name of 

 mail-anschi, which represents the end of a large branch ill chosen, and some- 



