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CHAP. 14. (12.)—TWO VARIETIES OF THE HIPPOPHAES: TWO REMEDIES.

The hippophaes1 grows in sandy soils, and on the sea-shore. It is a plant with white thorns, and covered with clusters, like the ivy, the berries being white, and partly red. The root of it is full of a juice which is either used by itself, or else is made up into lozenges with meal of fitches: taken in doses of one obolus, it carries off bile, and it is extremely beneficial if used with honied wine. There is another2 hippophaes, without either stalk or flowers, and consisting only of diminutive leaves: the juice of this also is wonderfully useful for dropsy.

These plants would appear, too, to be remarkably well adopted to the constitution of the horse, as it can be for no other reason than this that they have received their name.3 For, in fact, there are certain plants which have been created as remedies for the diseases of animals, the Divinity being bounteously lavish of his succours and resources: so much so, indeed, that we cannot sufficiently admire the wisdom with which he has arranged them according to the classes of animated beings which they are to serve, the causes which give rise to their various maladies, and the times at which they are likely to be in requisition: hence it is that there is no class of beings, no season, and, so to speak, no day, that is without its remedy.

1 Probably the Hippophaës rhamnoides of Linnæus. This, however, Fée says, has no milky juice, but a dry, tough, ligneous root. Sprengel identifies it with the Euphorbia spinosa of Linnæus, on account of it milky juice; but that plant, as Fée remarks, does not bear berries. properly so called, and the fruit is yellow and prickly.

2 See B. xxvii. c. 66. It is identified by Fée with the Carduus stellatus or Centaurea calcitrapa of Linnæus, the common star-thistle.

3 75 As compounds of ἴππος, a "horse." Hardouin, however, thinks that the names ἱπποφαὲς and ἱππόφαιστον have another origin, and that they are compounds of φάος, "lustre,"—from the brilliancy which they were said to impart to cloths—and ἵππος, in an augmentative sense, meaning "great lustre."

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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    • A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), CORO´NA
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