HERODOTUS AS A BOTANIST. 109 



countries and are looked upon as the diet o£ the i-ich, and for the 

 poor man to consume the diet of the rich is considered a disgrace. 

 In the same Avay it is considered a disgrace, or disgracefully 

 extravagant for the fellah to eat fowls or their eggs, which are 

 regai'ded as the food of the rich. It is not that the poor peasants do 

 not like them, but they would not like to eat them any more than a poor 

 person in Whitechapel would like to dress in silks and satins. We 

 are much indebted to Dr. Walker for his paper and its interesting 

 and valuable information. I was almost in hopes that he would 

 have said something about the castor oil plant having been 

 regarded by many people as Jonah's gourd. It is a very old 

 opinion that the castor oil plant was the gourd which the 

 Almighty caused to grow up to give shade to the disheartened 

 prophet. In one of the Mishna treatises the question is asked, 

 "• With what should lamps be lighted on the Sabbath ? " And one 

 answer is, that they ai"e not to be lighted with the oil of kik, 

 which is considered to be the castor oil plant, and to be identical 

 with the word used in the Bible for the gourd of Jonah. A cele- 

 bj'ated Rabbi explains that the oil drawn from this plant is meant, 

 and it is curious that the Greek word ki'ki, which means the castor 

 oil berry, is almost identical wath this ancient Hebrew word kiJc or 

 kilcioH. The I/atin term Ricinu.s, the castor oil plant, is not very 

 improbably a corruption of the word kiki, the first K being turned 

 into B. The Greek kcki also is equivalent to tcpoTtci', which signifies 

 a tick, and this woi'd used to be applied to the castor oil plant, 

 probably because the seed of the castor oil plant does strongly 

 resemble a tick, as shown in the bottle before us. The Latin word 

 also signifies a tick, as well as the castor oil plant. 



I should like to hear a little more about the Lotas-eaters. I am 

 rather interested in those peojjle, and have a sympathetic feeling 

 with them. They were usually contented if they had something 

 sweet to eat, so much so that they were ready to abandon the 

 cares and anxieties of life and even were wilUng* to hear nothing 

 more of their own country. I wish the author would tell us what he 

 thinks the plant is that furnished the sweet fruit to the Lotus- 

 eaters. It is often considered to be the tree known as the clom, 

 the fruit of which is certainly very sweet, though I should not say 

 so sweet and pleasant as to cause men to forget everything else 

 but the pleasure of eating it. Not improbably the lotus was the 

 date fruit, which is very abundant in the island of Jerba, where 

 was the chief resort of the Lotus-eaters. 



