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CHAP. 41.—THE MYRICA, OTHERWISE CALLED TAMARICA, OR TAMARIX: THREE REMEDIES.

Lenæus says, that the myrice,1 otherwise known as the "crica," is a similar plant to that of which brooms are made at Aneria.2 He states also that, boiled in wine and then beaten up and applied with honey, it heals carcinomatous sores. I would here remark, parenthetically, that some persons identify it with the tamarice. Be this as it may, it is particularly useful for affections of the spleen, the juice of it being extracted for the purpose, and taken in wine; indeed so marvellous, they say, is its antipathy to this part of the viscera, and this only, that if swine drink from troughs made of this wood,3 they will be found to lose the spleen. Hence it is that in maladies of the spleen victuals and drink are given to the patient in vessels made of this wood.

A medical author too, of high repute,4 has asserted that a sprig broken from off this tree, without being allowed to touch the earth or iron, will allay pains in the bowels, if applied to the body, and kept close to it by the clothes and girdle. The common people, as already5 stated, look upon this tree as illomened, because it bears no fruit, and is never propagated from seed.

1 See B. xiii. c. 37, and Note 96; where it is stated that, in Fée 's opinion, several plants were united by the ancients under this one collective name-brooms for instance, heaths, and tamarisks. He thinks, however, that under the name "Myrica," Pliny may possibly have intended to comprehend the larger heaths and the Tamarix Gallica of Linnæus. M. Fraas, as Littré states, gives the Tamarix Africana as the probable synonym of the Myrica of Pliny.

2 Of this broom-plant of Ameria nothing is known.

3 This cannot apply to any of the heaths of Europe. The tamarisk grows to a much larger size, and barrels and drinking-vessels are made of the wood.

4 "Gravis." He does not, however, show his gravity in the present instance.

5 In B. xvi. c. 45.

The Natural History. Pliny the Elder. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. London. Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 1855.

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