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 excoriation. 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 axroci 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