410 
iMERGE TO GYRENE. 
height very much resembling the hemlock, or, more properly speaking 
perhaps, the Daucas or wild carrot. We were told that it was usually 
fatal to the camels who ate of it, and that its juice if apphed to 
the flesh, would fester any part where there was the slightest excoria- 
tion. This plant had much more resemblance to the silphium of 
ancient times (as it is expressed on the coins of Cyrene) than any 
which we had hitherto seen ; although its stem is much more slender 
than that which is there represented, and the blossoms (for it 
has several) more open. In some parts of the route from Merge to 
Cyrene we lost sight of this plant altogether ; while at others we 
found it in considerable quantities, growing chiefly wherever there 
was pasturage. Immediately about Cyrene we observed it in great 
abundance; and soon ceased, from its frequent occurrence, to pay 
any particular attention to it. 
It is extremely probable that the plant here mentioned is the 
laserpitium or silphium in such repute among the ancients ; and it 
may not here be amiss to collect a few of the remarks which have 
been made at various periods respecting it. 
According to Herodotus the silphium originally extended from 
the island of Platea to the beginning of the Greater Syrtis*, a space 
* Kca TO (Ti?v(piov a^x^roci aoro rovrov (the harbours of Menelaus and Aziris), Ttaqmst Ss 
aoro UXarertr vmov rou oro/zctTor rm 'Lvpnos to SiXipiov. — (Melp. §^S'). 
Mr. Beloe is of opinion that Herodotus intended in this passage to point out the 
limits of a place or province called Silphium, so named originally without any reference 
to the plant ; and in his I’emarks on another passage in the same book — eiai h xai yaXxt sv 
TO) oiXipLoj yivo/AEvai . . (§ bC.) he observes — “ I cannot help thinking that the herb was 
named from the place and not the place from the herb.” But the space here included 
