Taxus 



parently with impunity, but if they feed on branches 

 that have been gathered and left to ferment they die 

 of it. 



Flower, January to April. 



Italian name, Tasso. 



Terebinthus. 



' per artem | inclusum buxo aut Oricia terebintho | lucet ebur ' 



(Ae. x. 135). 



The terebinth, or turpentine-tree (Pistacia Tere- 

 binthus), now grows wild in Italy, and the point 

 of Virgil's epithet is uncertain. According to 

 Servius, a variety with very black wood came from 

 Oricus in Epirus, but it looks as though Servius, 

 after the manner of scholiasts, had concocted his 

 note out of the passage. Virgil did not scruple to 

 couple a foreign name with an Italian tree or plant 

 if the foreign town or country was famous for it. 

 Thus, in spite of all the olives of southern Italy, he 

 calls the fruit ' Sicyonian bacam,' because the Achaean 

 town of Sicyon was famous for its olives. 



In Greece, Theophrastus tells us, the wood was 

 not used, and in Italy the art of inlaying, to which 

 our passage refers, was doubtless later than his time, 

 however fashionable it may have become in the later 

 days of the Republic. The Greeks by incision got 

 a rosin from the exudation of the tree. This is now 

 called Chian turpentine, as most of it comes from the 

 Isle of Skio. 



Flower, April and May. 

 Italian name, Terebinto. 

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