after carrying them about on their backs, perhaps a hundred miles, sell them for five shillings apiece. This trade, hitherto neglected, is now carried on in Schwarzwalde; and at present there is a citizen here at Göttingen, who takes with him every year to England several Canary birds and bullfinches (_Loxia pyrrhula_), with the produce of which he purchases such small wares as he has occasion for. The principal food of these birds is the Canary seed, which, as is commonly affirmed, and not improbably, was first brought, for this purpose, from the Canary Islands to Spain, and thence dispersed all over Europe. Most of the old botanists, however, are of opinion that the plant which produces it is the same as that called _Phalaris_ by Dioscorides[63]. Should this be true, it will follow that this kind of grass must have grown wild in other places besides the island it takes its name from; which is not improbable. But those who read the different descriptions which the ancients have given of _Phalaris_, will, in my opinion, observe that they may be equally applied to more plants; and Pliny seems to have used this name for more than one species of grass[64]. However this may be, it is certain that this seed, when it was used as food for these birds, began to be cultivated first in Spain, and afterwards in the southern parts of France. At present it is cultivated in various parts, and forms no inconsiderable branch of trade, particularly in the island of Sicily, where the plant is called _Scagliuola_, or _Scaghiola_. The seed is sold principally to the French and the Genoese. In England, the industrious inhabitants of the Isle of Thanet, particularly those around Margate and Sandwich, gain considerably by this article, as they can easily transport it to London by water. That this plant might be cultivated with little trouble in Germany, is shown by the yearly experience of those who raise it in their gardens, and by its having become so naturalized in some parts of Hesse, that it propagates by seed of itself in the fields. The use of the seed might also be extended, for it yields a good meal; but the grains are not easily freed from the husks. I shall here take occasion to remark, that Savary[65] has been guilty of an error, when he says that archil is cultivated in the Canary Islands in order to be sold as food for Canary birds. One may easily perceive that this mistake has arisen from his confounding that lichen used for dyeing with this kind of grass; and I should not have considered it worth notice, had it not been copied into Ludovici’s Dictionary of Trade, from which, perhaps, it may be copied into the works of others. FOOTNOTES [58] Gesneri Historiæ Animalium, liber tertius. Tiguri, 1555, fol. p. 234. [59] Uccelliera, overo Discorso della natura di diversi Uccelli. Roma, 1622, 4to.