According to Diodorus, the primitive Egyptians lived upon herbs. "They also eat," he says,[33] "the stems and roots which grow in the marshes. Especially did they hunt after the _Agrostis_, a plant remarkable for its sweet savour and the sufficient nourishment which it offers to the wants of man. It is likewise considered an excellent provision for cattle, from its fattening properties. It is in remembrance of these benefits that the inhabitants of Egypt, when worshipping their gods, carry this plant in their hand." The _Agrostis_ of Diodorus would apply to all the _Graminaceæ_ whose stems and roots contain nutritive and saccharine principles. Let us here remind the reader that the sugar-cane belongs to the same family as barley and the dog's-tooth. Pliny is much more explicit. What he says of the _Gramen_ (or grass), the "commonest of herbs"--_inter herbas vulgatissimum_--and of the geniculated spaces between its knots (_geniculatis serpit internodiis_), applies with tolerable accuracy to our _Triticum repens_. He also speaks of the diuretic properties of a decoction from its trailing roots.[34] As for his _Gramen aculeatum_ (or needle-like grass), it is positively our _Cynodon dactylon_. "The five spurs or needles which shoot out," he says, "from the top of the stem, have procured it the name of _Dactylon_." To these digitiform spikes he attributes the property of checking the bleeding of the nose, when they are introduced into the nostrils. But a thorn is much better fitted to produce this effect; the spikes of the digitated panicle of the _Cynodon dactylon_ are much too soft to determine epistaxis by a mechanical action. So it is not improbable that they owe their putative virtue to their colouring, which is not unlike that of blood, and which has even procured for the species the name of _Digitaria sanguinalis_. In the same manner the capricious mediæval imagination pronounced liverwort, with its marbled leaves, a sovereign remedy for diseases of the lungs,--organs remarkable for their marbled appearance. Dioscorides is quite as explicit as Pliny. What the latter names _Gramen_, he, however, calls _Agrostis_. After having particularised the nodosities of the stem--a feature common to nearly all the Graminaceæ--he describes very clearly the long creeping roots put forth by the said stem; and he does not forget to mention the sugary savour, so characteristic of the rhizomes (ῥίζας γλυκείας) of the _Triticum repens_.[35] Theophrastus confines himself to indicating the _Agrostis_ as a herb which infests the fields.[36] * * * * *