306 
never been observed in the Nile valley north of the Baiuda 
Desert (16°-18° N.), the exception being some specimens 
collected by Bové* in the desert near Cairo in 1829: Schweinfurth 
identified the Andropogon of Deir-el-Bahari more ‘particularly 
with the article which nowadays is brought down from the Sudan 
and sold in the bazaars of Cairo as a medicinal drug under the Arabic 
name ‘Mahareb.’ We shall, however, hear presently that the 
African Schoenanthus was considered by the ancients to be of very 
inferior quality, and it is therefore more likely that at least a part 
of the supply for Thebes and Hawara came from the Arabian 
trade emporia on the Red Sea; so far indeed as the Ptolemaic 
period is concerned we know this for certain. 
It has been suggested that the ‘Kaneh bosem’ or ‘Kaneh 
hattobh,’ the “good” or “fragrant’’ reed of the Bible was also 
C. Schoenanthus. It may, of course, be assumed that the old 
Hebrews knew the grass ; but how far it answered to those terms, 
is difficult to say, considering the vagueness of the passages in 
which they occur. The first Greek translators of the Bible, however, 
rendered them as “ Kd\apoc dowpatixéc,” Which was very generally 
put down as a product of India. : 
The early connections which -existed between Egypt and 
ancient Greece, possibly also those with Phoenicia, may have 
made the Greek doctors familiar with OC. Schoenanthus at a 
remote date. Hippocrates (460-357 B.C.) knew it as ‘cyoivoc’{ - 
kar’ é€oynv, or in connection with the epithets *dvocpoc, evoopoc - 
and «vwdoye.t He does not attempt to describe it. It was 
evidently an article familiar to those of his contemporaries 
for whom his treatises were written. It is only gradually 
that we learn more about it until at last we have undisputed 
evidence of the meaning of those terms which were handed 
on, mainly in prescriptions, from generation to generation. 
Theophrastus (390-305 B.C.), mentions cyoivoc among the 
aromata, and he makes the first attempt to fix its origin. He 
indicates two localities as its home. One is “on the other side 
of the Libanon” in the marshes of a lake which can easily be 
identified as Lake Huleh (Lake Merom of the Bible) in Galilee. 
So far, he is no doubt wrong, for C. Schoenanthus is not 2 
marsh plant and has never been observed there. Its nearest 
station is some 270 miles north-east of Lake Huleh, on the 
Kuphrates. The other habitat mentioned by Theophrastus is 
Arabia, of which he says “the steppes are, as is common 
knowledge, fragrant with the exhalation of the grass” (‘in Arabia 
aspirationem agri odoratissimam esse inter omnes constat’’). 
Dioscorides|| (cirea 77 A.D.) takes us a step further. He too 
knows the Arabian variety and accords the first place to it, 
particularly to that which comes from Nabataea. Then there is 
a Babylonian kind, also called revyirne, and an inferior variety 
* According to his own labels; but he does not mention the grass in, his 
Relation abrégée d’un voyage bot. in Ann. Sc. Nat. sér. 2., vol.i. (1834), pp. 72-76. 
+ Hippocrates, ed. Anutii Faésii, Francf. (1595), sect. v., p. 138, line 16. 
+t According to Stephanus, vii., p.1682, A and B. See also Kirchner, Bot. Schrift. 
Theophrastus (1874), p. 493. 
§ Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. Illustr. J. B. Stapel, lib. ix., p. 1004. 
|| Dioscorides Anaz., De Materia Medica, ed. Sprengel, p. 31. - 
