The Wonders of Nature and Art

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: VEGETABLES. IT is not to lie supposed, that such a cou-ntry as Egypt, which is very hot and annually overflowed, should produce any great variety ot plants; and it may be presumed that very few, except those of the aquatic kind, were originally produced in Egypt, but have been transplanted thither from other countries. The celebrated plant called papyrus, or biblu?, which formerly grew plentifully on the banks of the Nile, and is perhaps a native of Egypt, is now rarely tobe met with, the poorer sort of people having almost destroyed it, by dig- ing up the roots lor fuel. This plant was made use of by the ancients to write upon, and thence our paper had its name It has a large stem, from whence some say thev took the pith, whicli thev worked into a white paste, or glue, and of that made a kind of paper, almost in the same manner as we do with our linen rags; but others say tliey used the inner rind for that purpose. According to Pliny, the root of this plant is as thick as a man's arm, and ten cubits long, from whence arise a great number of triangular stalks, at the exiremi- ties whereof its flowers are ranged in clusters. Jts root is woody and knotty, its leaves long like those of the bulrush, and its taste and imell re- Though the papyrus grew chiefly in Egypt, it also found in India; and Guitaiulmus assures us he s: iw it in Chaktea, at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, large fens, wherein with his own hands be ptucked a 7'apyrus differing in nothing from that of tlxa Cic. Siralvi likewise speaks of a sort growing in Italy; hut we do not find it was ever used for making palicr. seisWe those of the cypress, of vliicli some rec ili species. The manner of making the Egyptian p; tvaiasfollows: they began with lopping oif the PtWead of the papyrus, as of no...