MERGE TO GYRENE. 417 by a sudden and heavy fall of rain, resembling which completely drenched the ground in the neighbourhood of the Hesperian Gardens and of the eastern confines of the Greater Syrtis. This miraculous shower is said to have occurred seven years before the building of the city of Cyrene ; which was erected (says Pliny) in the year of Rome 143. He adds, also, on the authority of Theophrastus, (the author to whom he chiefly alludes in quoting Greek authorities above,) that the silphium extended itself over a space of four thousand stadia, and that its nature was wild and unadapted to cultivation, retiring towards the desert whenever it was too much attended to. We have already observed that great care was taken by the ancients to preserve the silphium from the sheep and cattle, the former of which were remarkably fond of it : when allowed to be eaten, it first acted medicinally upon the animals, and afterwards fattened them exceedingly ; giving at the same time an excellent flavour to the flesh. Whenever they were ill, it either speedily restored them, or else destroyed them altogether ; but the first of these effects was most usual. It is probable, however, that it only agreed with those animals which were accustomed to it ; at least the plant now observable in the Cyrenaica, which answers to the description of the silphium, is very frequently productive of fatal effects to the animals (particularly the camels) who eat of it, not being accustomed to the soil. One of the reasons advanced by the son of Shekh Hadood, Abou-Buckra, for putting a high price upon his camels at Merge (on the occasion already before the reader) was that they were going into the country where the silphium was found, which, he said, was very dangerous for them to eat ; and the