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produced in India different from those in Greece, but 
which are stated to be without names. 
The attention which was paid to the identification of 
plants, and the country in which they were produced, may 
be seen from the account given of the Ivy, which, though 
refusing to grow in some parts of Syria, was found flourish- 
ing in India on Mount Meru, the birth-place, according to 
some accounts, of Bacchus ; this Harpalus attempted, but 
unsuccessfully, to cultivate in the gardens of Babylon. 
Bacchus is said also to have been the discoverer of the 
apple, and some other fruits, which are now found to be 
indigenous in the ramifications of Hindoo Ehoosh, where the 
holy Meru of the Hindoos is by the best authorities placed. 
Considering, therefore, the minuteness and nature of 
the information obtained in those times, respecting even so 
remote a country as India; it is not assuming too much, 
or placing too great a reliance on our inferences, to con- 
clude that a great portion of the substances mentioned as 
the produce of that country, are exactly the same as those, 
to which we now apply the names found in the early 
Greek authors. But this, according to the views we have 
taken, proves the still earlier investigation of their pro- 
perties, and therefore the cultivation of medicine in the 
countries where alone these substances are found to grow. 
This will equally follow, even if it be denied that the 
several substances mentioned as Indian products, have 
been correctly ascertained; for there is no doubt that 
many such, whether correctly or only approximately ascer- 
tained, formed articles of commerce to, and were used 
as medicines in, the West, even in times prior to those of 
Theophrastus, 
Admitting the above degree of knowledge of Indian 
plants and products at the time of the last-named philo- 
