112 ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON THE 



brought from the province of Macrju, they we're all 

 three probably the same plant with the nard of Arrian ; 

 but, unfortunately, Rumphius thought of no coun- 

 try less than of Persia , and of no province less than of 

 Machtdiii for he writes very distinctly, both in his La- 

 tin and his Dutch columns, that the plant in question 

 grows in Mackia?i> which he well knew to be one of 

 the Moluccas*. I am far from intending to give pain, 

 by detecting this trifling mistake, and, as I may have . 

 made many of greater consequence, I shall be truly 

 obliged to any man who will set me right with good 

 manners, the sacred laws of which ought never to be 

 violated in a literary debate, except when some pe- 

 tulant aggressor has forfeited all claim to respect. 



Arrian himself can by no means be understood 

 to assert that the Indian spikenard grew in Persia ; 

 for his words are a fragrant root of nard\, where 

 the omission of the definite articles implies rather a 

 nardy than the nard, or the most celebrated species 

 of it; and it seems very clear, that the Greeks used 

 that foreign word generically for odoriferous plants 

 of different natural orders: but Arrian in truth 

 was a mere compiler; and his credit, even as a civil 

 historian, seems liable to so much doubt, that it can- 

 not be safe to rely on him for any fact in the history 

 of nature. u We cannot, says the judicious and ac- 

 " curate Strabo, give easy credence to the genera- 



* Hi flores s^pc, immo vulgo fere, observantur in vetustis Sitee 

 stipitibus, qui in Tcrnata^ Moth<t t ft Mackian crcsamt. Vol 5. 

 Lib. 8. Cap. 24. p. 182. 



lity 



