660 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO }7Q0. 



useful in the vegetable creation for the sustenance of animal life, and Nature has 

 also kindly made them the most abundant in all parts of the habitable earth. The 

 term spica is applied to plants of the natural order verticillatae, in which there are 

 many species of fragrant plants, and the lavender, which being an indigenous 

 one, affording a grateful perfume, was called Nardus Italica by the Romans; but 

 we never find the term arista applied to these. The poets, as well as the natural- 

 ists, constantly apply this latter term to the true Nardus. Statins calls the 

 Spikenard odoratae aristae. Ovid, in mentioning it as one of the materials of the 

 Phoenix's nest, calls it Nardi levis arista; and a poem, ascribed to Lactantius, 

 on the same subject, says, his addit teneras Nardi pubentis aristas, where the 

 epithet pubentis seems even to point out that it belonged to the genus andropo- 

 gon, a name given to it by Linnaeus from this circumstance. Galen says, that 

 though there are various sorts of Nardus, the term NapJ'oo-Tap^u?, or Spikenard, 

 should not be applied to any but the Nardus Indica. It would appear that the 

 Nardus Celtica was a plant of a quite different habit, and is supposed to be a 

 species of Valeriana. The description of the Nardus Indica by Pliny does not 

 indeed correspond with the appearance of our specimen; for he says it is frutex 

 radice pingui et crassd ; whereas ours has small fibrous roots. But as Italy is 

 very remote from the native country of this plant, it is reasonable to suppose 

 that others, more easily procurable, used to be subtsituted for it; and the same 

 author says, that there were Q different plants by which it could be imitated and 

 adulterated. There would be strong temptations to do this from the great de- 

 mand for it, and the expense and difficulty of distant inland carriage; and as it 

 was much used as a perfume, being brought into Greece and Italy in the form 

 of an unguent manufactured in Laodicea, Tarsus, and other towns of Syria and 

 Asia Minor, it is probable that any grateful aromatic resembling it was allowed 

 to pass for it. It is probable that the Nardus of Pliny, and great part of what 

 is now imported from the Levant, and found under that name in the shops, is a 

 plant growing in the countries on the Euphrates, or in Syria, where the great 

 emporiums of the eastern and western commerce were situated. There is a Nar- 

 dus Assyria mentioned by Horace; and Dioscorides mentions the Nardus Syriaca, 

 as a species different from the Indica, which certainly was brought from some of 

 the remote parts of India ; for both Dioscorides and Galen, by way of fixing 

 more precisely the country whence it comes, call it also Nardus Gangites. 3dly, 

 Garcias ab Horto, a Portuguese, who resided many years at Goa in the l6th 

 century, has given a figure of the roots, or rather the lower parts of the stalks, 

 which corresponds with our specimen ; and he says expressly, that there is but 

 this one species of Nardus known in India, either for the consumption of the 

 natives, or for exportation to Persia and Arabia. It is remarkable that he is per- 

 haps the only author who speaks of it in its recent state from his own observation. 



