2 APPENDIX. 



from this plant was in Seide. By Seide was anciently meant 

 Upper Egypt, and it is fo called to this day ; and the Saitic, 

 probably the oldeft language known in Egypt after the 

 Ethiopic, rtill fubfifts, being written in the firft character 

 that fucceeded the hieroglyphics in the valley or cultivated . 

 part of Egypt. 



Early, however, as the papyrus was known, it does not 

 appear to me to have ever been a plant that could have exift- 

 ed in, or, as authors have faid, been proper to the river Nile ; 

 its head is too heavy, and in a plain country the wind muft 

 have had too violent a hold of it. The ftalk is fmall and 

 feeble, and withal too tall, the root too fhort and ilender to 

 flay it againfl the violent preffure of the wind and current, 

 therefore I do conftantly believe it never could be a plant 

 growing in the river Nile itfelf, or in any very deep or rapid 

 river. 



Pliny ■*, who feems to have confidered and known it per- 

 fectly in all its parts, does not pretend that it ever grew in i 

 the body of the Nile itfelf, but in the califhes or places 

 where the Nile had overflowed and was ftagnant, and 

 where the water was not above two cubits high. This 

 obfervation, I believe, holds good univerfally, at leaft it did 

 fo wherever I have feen this plant, either in the overflow- 

 ed ground in the Seide, or Upper Egypt, or in Abymnia, . 

 where it never grew in the bed of a river, but generally in 

 fome fmall flream that ifTiied out of, or into fome large 

 stagnant lake cr abandoned water-courfe. It did not even , 



, • trufl. 



** Fliii. Nat. Hi-fi lib. xifc. cap. II. 



dsi 



