It may here be proper to mention that, on the day after our departure from Merge, we observed a plant about three feet in height very much resembling the hemlock, or, more properly speaking perhaps, the Daucas or wild carrot. We were told that it was usually fatal to the camels who ate of it, and that its juice if applied to the flesh, would fester any part where there was the slightest excoriation. This plant had much more resemblance to the silphium of ancient times (as it is expressed on the coins of Cyrene) than any which we had hitherto seen; although its stem is much more slender than that which is there represented, and the blossoms (for it has several) more open. In some parts of the route from Merge to Cyrene we lost sight of this plant altogether; while at others we found it in considerable quantities, growing chiefly wherever there was pasturage. Immediately about Cyrene we observed it in great abundance; and soon ceased, from its frequent occurrence, to pay any particular attention to it. It is extremely probable that the plant here mentioned is the laserpitium or silphium in such repute among the ancients; and it may not here be amiss to collect a few of the remarks which have been made at various periods respecting it. According to Herodotus the silphium originally extended from the island of Platea to the beginning of the Greater Syrtis[2], a space including the whole of the mountainous district of the Cyrenaica; and Scylax, after mentioning the islands Aedonia and Platæa, informs us that, beyond these (in passing from east to west) are the regions which produce the silphium. We may also infer from a passage in Arrian[3], that the silphium extended itself over the whole of the fertile part of the Cyrenaica to the confines of the desert which bounds it; since he tells us that the fertility of this country continued as far as the limits of the silphium itself, and that beyond these boundaries all was desert and sandy. Theophrastus also observes that the silphium was found in the Cyrenaica, and that the greater portion of it was produced from the country of the Hesperides in the parts about the Greater Syrtis[4]. It appears to have sprung up in the grass, or pasture lands, as the plant we have mentioned above also does, and the sheep are reported to have been so fond of it that whenever they smelt it they would run to the place, and after eating the flower, would scratch up the root and devour it with the same avidity[5]. On this account (says Arrian, who has recorded the fact just mentioned) some of the Cyreneans drive their sheep away from the parts in which the silphium is produced; and others surround their land with hedges, through which the sheep are not able to pass when they chance to approach near the plants[6]. Silphium appears to have been found in many parts of Asia, as well as in some parts of Europe; but that of Cyrene was much the most esteemed and constituted a material part of the commerce of