The plant that I shall now speak of, the Papyrus, is a strong proof of this, and is a remarkable instance of the violent changes these subjects have undergone in a few ages. It was at the first the repository of learning and of record; it was the vehicle of knowledge from one nation to another; its uses were so extended, that it came to be even the food of man, and yet we are now disputing what this plant was, and what was its figure, and whether or not it is to be found in Egypt. A gentleman[2] at the head of the literary world, who from his early years has dedicated himself to the study of the theory of this science, and at a riper age has travelled through the world in the more agreeable pursuit of the practical part of it, hath assured me, that, unless from bad drawings, he never had an idea of what this plant was till I first gave him a very fine specimen. The Count de Caylus says, that having heard there was a specimen of this plant in Paris, he used his utmost endeavours to find it, but when brought to him, it appeared to be a cyperus of a very common, well-known kind. With my own hands, not without some labour and risk, I collected specimens from Syria, from the river Jordan, from two different places in Upper and Lower Egypt, from the lakes Tzana and Gooderoo in Abyssinia; and it was with the utmost pleasure I found they were in every particular intrinsically the same, without any variation or difference, from what this plant has been described by the ancients; only I thought that those of Egypt, the middle of the two extremes, were stronger, fairer, and fully a foot taller than those in Syria and Abyssinia. [Illustration: _Papyrus_ _London. Published Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1790 by G. Robinson & Co._] OF PLANTS, SHRUBS, AND TREES. PAPYRUS. The papyrus is a cyperus, called by the Greeks Biblus. There is no doubt but it was early known in Egypt, since we learn from Horus Apollo, the Egyptians, wishing to describe the antiquity of their origin, figured a faggot, or bundle of papyrus, as an emblem of the food they first subsisted on, when the use of wheat was not yet known in that country. But I should rather apprehend that another plant, hereafter described, and not the papyrus, was what was substituted for wheat, for though the Egyptians sucked the honey or sweetness from the root of the papyrus, it does not appear that any part of this cyperus could be used for food, nor is it so at this day, though the Ensete, the plant to which I allude, might, without difficulty, have been used for bread in early ages before the discovery of wheat; in several provinces it holds its place at this day.