292 AN INTERESTING PLANT. ch. xi. 



called to Constantinople early in the last century to cure 

 the favourite daughter of the Sultan. Being successful 

 in his treatment, he received many tokens of favour, and 

 seems to have made use of his opportunities to visit several 

 parts of the Turkish Empire, and certainly travelled in 

 the Eegency of Tunis. The same plant was next seen by 

 the English traveller, Thomas Shaw, who mentions it in 

 the Appendix to his Travels published in 1738 ; and it was 

 at last more fully described and well figured by Desfon- 

 taines in his excellent work, the Flora Atlantica. De- 

 candolle, in attempting to reduce to order the vast mass 

 of plants that belong to the natural order of Compositce, 

 clearly saw that this differed essentially from the genus 

 Cynara (of which the type is the common artichoke), and 

 referred it first to Serratula, and finally to Rhaponticum ; 

 and it has hence been generally known as Rhaponticum 

 aoaule. Many botanists were somewhat startled to find 

 in the Genera Plantarum of Bentham and Hooker that 

 the authors had united all the plants hitherto ranked 

 under the generic name Rhaponticum with Centaurea, a 

 vast genus, containing species of the most varied aspect, 

 of which nearly 300 are already known in the Mediter- 

 ranean region. It was interesting to us to find that the 

 new species discovered by Balansa, of which the foliage is 

 quite undistinguishable from the old Rhaponticum 

 acaule, is, as regards the flowering heads, intermediate in 

 structure between that and recognised species of Centaurea, 

 though nearer to the latter. If we had remembered 

 Shaw's statement, that the roots of his Cynara acaulis 

 have an agreeable flavour, and are eaten by the Arabs in 

 some parts of Africa, we should certainly have tried 

 whether the species are also similar in this respect. 



During the ascent of the moimtain we had passed near 

 a little hamlet, containing eight or ten houses of the poor- 

 est class ; but the laws of native hospitality required that 

 refreshments shoiild be offered to the strangers, and on 

 the way back a halt was called. The mona consisted of 



