The fourth name which, with any kind of probability, has been translated by the word artichoke is _cactus_. This plant, which, in the time of Theophrastus and Pliny, grew only in Sicily and not in Greece, had broad prickly leaves[618]; the flower was filled with a kind of wool, which, when eaten inadvertently, was pernicious[619]; the calyx was prickly: and, besides a long stem, it shot forth branches which crept along the ground[620], and which, when the outer rind had been peeled off, were eaten either fresh, or pickled in salt water[621]. The bottom of the calyx of this plant was likewise used, after it had been freed from its seeds and woolly substance[622]. It had a great resemblance to the pith of the palm-tree[623]. That the _cactus_ was different from the _scolymus_ we are expressly told by Theophrastus; and Pliny also distinguishes them both from each other and from the _carduus_. Athenæus[624] is the only author who says that the _cactus_ and the _cinara_ were the same; but he gives no other proof than a very simple etymology. It must therefore be admitted that the _cactus_ was a species of the thistle kind entirely different from any of the former. I think I have proved, therefore, that the Greeks and the Romans used the pulpy bottom of the calyx, and the most tender stalks and young shoots of some plants reckoned to belong to the thistle kind, in the same manner as we use artichokes and cardoons; and that the latter were unknown to them. It appears to me probable that the use of these plants, at least in Italy and Europe in general, was in the course of time laid aside and forgotten, and that the artichoke, when it was first brought to Italy from the Levant, was considered as a new species of food. It is undoubtedly certain that our artichoke was first known in that country in the fifteenth century. Hermolaus Barbarus, who died in 1494, relates that this plant was first seen at Venice in a garden in 1473, at which time it was very scarce[625]. About the year 1466, one of the family of Strozzi brought the first artichokes to Florence from Naples[626]. Politian, in a letter in which he describes the dishes he found at a grand entertainment in Italy in 1488, among these mentions artichokes[627]. They were introduced into France in the beginning of the sixteenth century[628]; and into England in the reign of Henry the Eighth[629].