202 
PLINy's natural HISTOET. [Book XIII. 
shrub called tragion/' It is similar in appearance to the 
terebinth ; a similarity which extends to the seed even, said 
to be remarkably efficacious for healing wounds made by 
arrows. The same island produces tragacanthe^^ also, with a 
root which resembles that of the white thorn ; it is very much 
preferred^ to that which is grown in Media or in Achaia; the 
price at which it sells is three denarii per pound. 
CHAP. 37. THE TEAGOS OE SCOEPIO ; THE MYEICA OE BEYA ; THE 
OSTEYS. 
Asia, too, produces the tragos or scorpio, a thorny shrub, 
destitute of leaves, with red clusters upon it that are employed 
in medicine. Italy produces the myrica, which some persons 
call the ''tamarix;'' and Achaia, the wild brya,^^ remarkable 
for the circumstance that it is only the cultivated kind that 
bears a fruit, not unlike the gall-nut. In Syria and Egypt 
this plant is very abundant. It is to the trees of this last 
country that we give the name of unhappy but yet those 
of Greece are more unhappy still, for that country produces the 
tree known as ostrys," or, as it is sometimes called, "ostrya,'* 
a solitary tree that grows about rocks washed by the water, 
and very similar in the bark and branches to the ash. It re- 
91 See B. xxvii. c. 115. 
^2 He says elsewhere that it is like the juniper, which, however, is not. 
the case. Guettard thinks that the tragion is the Androsasmon fetidum,, 
the Hyperium hircinum of the modern botanists. Sprengel also adopts 
the same opinion. Fee is inclined to think that it was a variety of the 
Pistacia lentiscus. 
^3 Goat's thorn. The Astragalus Creticus of Linnaeus. 
9* He speaks of gum tragacanth. 
9^ See B. xxvii. c. 116. Sprengel identifies it with the Salsola tragus 
of Linnaeus. 
Probably the Tamarix Gallica of Linnaeus. Fee says, in relation to 
the myrica, that it would seem that the ancients united in one collective 
name, several plants which resembled each other, not in their botanical 
characteristics, but in outward appearance. To this, he says, is owing 
the fact that Dioscorides calls the myrica a tree, Favorinus a herb ; 
Dioscorides says that it is fruitful, Nicander and Pliny call it barren ; 
Virgil calls it small, and Theophrastus says that it is large. 
^"^ Fee thinks that it is the Tamarix orientalis of Delille. 
®s *' Infelix," meaning sterile." He seems to say this more particularly 
in reference to the brya, which Egypt produces. As to this use of the word 
*' infelix," see B. xvi. c. 46. 
99 Sprengel and Fee identify this with the Ostrya vulgaris of WHldenow, 
the Carpinus ostrya of Linnaeus. 
