130 THE TREES AND SHRUBS [LECT. 



gree by pronunciation, and by the long series an- 

 norum which had elapsed since the time of those 

 philosophers ; but many of them were unmutilated, 

 and their virtues faithfully handed down in the oral 

 tradition of the country." 



And as an example of the use to which this 

 species of evidence may be applied, I have re- 

 marked in my " Roman Husbandry," that we have 

 an additional reason for believing the Misletoe of 

 the Oak, mentioned by Dioscorides, to have been 

 the Loranthus europceus, and not the Viscum album, 

 with which it has been usually identified, from 

 finding that this plant is now called oft^, a mani- 

 fest corruption of i^vs, whereas the parasite which 

 grows on the Silver Fir is the true Misletoe, and 

 is termed yue'AAa. 



The other method of identifying the plants of 

 Dioscorides, was by means of the drawings ap- 

 pended to the Vienna MS., which I have already 

 noticed in p. 231 of my "Roman Husbandry." 



From these it may be inferred, that the word 

 cLKavOos was used as a generic term for several 

 plants of very distinct character, agreeing only in 

 the circumstance of their being spinous 8 ; that the 

 lov XevKov or XtVKoiov was not a violet, but some 

 species of cruciferous plant, and therefore perhaps, 

 as Sibthorp considered it, the Cheiranthus C/ieiri, or 

 as it is now sometimes called, the Dame's Violet * ; 

 that the Ta/ai>#oy was not a Larkspur, but an 



" " Roman Husbandry," p. 241. ' p. 240. 



