[ 6 +] 
inclined to think, that the Bella-donna was not 
known to either of the Grecian Fathers ; who are 
fo Short, vague, and immethodical, in their defcrip- 
tions, that it is very difficult, not to fay impoffible, 
to apply them to particular fpecies with judnefs and 
precision. 
Be this as it will, our redorers of botany agreed 
in general to rank it with the Solana, or Nightshades ; 
and as mod; of them took it to be the Xt y-a.nx.ci 
of Diofcorides, fo we find thereto the addition of fome 
epithet, expreffive of its deleterious quality, in mod: of 
their writings; fuch as lethale, fomniferum, furiofum, 
&c. Its general agreement with the plants of that 
genus, and alfo the knowlege the world foon had of 
its poifonous quality, when it is considered, that fyf- 
tematic distributions, from the parts of fr unification, 
had not been thought of at that time : thefe, I fay, 
were Sufficient reafons for referring it to the Night- 
shades. By fuch names therefore is it found in mod 
of the old writers j till Clulius, who, oblerving per- 
haps, that it differed in its parts of frudffication from 
the Solana, adopted the indigenous Italian name, as 
a generical one, and called it Bella-doqna. Csefal- 
pinus, the fird inventor of a botanic fydem, did not 
feparate it from the NightShades. Morifon and Ray, 
the revivers of method almod an hundred years af- 
terwards, were aware of the difference ; the former 
having placed it in a chapter among the Solanis af- 
fine s , and the latter condituted a didindt genus of it, 
tho’ he retained the old name in his hidory of plants. 
Tournefort adopted Clufius's name Bella-donna , and 
was followed by all the fydematic botanids, who 
have fince wrote ; as Boerhaave, Rivini, Ruppius, 
Knaut, 
