36. There is a fruit usually called the συκάμινον, which the people of Alexandria call the μόρον, in which they differ from every one else; but it has no connexion with the Egyptian fig, which some call συκόμορον, and which the natives scrape slightly with a knife, and then leave on the tree; and then when it has been tossed about by the wind, within three days it becomes ripe and fragrant, (especially if the wind is west,) and very good to eat, as there is something in it which is moderately cooling for people in a fever, when made up with oil of roses into a plaster, so as to be put upon the stomach, and it is no slight relief to the patient. Now the Egyptian sycaminus bears its fruit on the main stem, and not on the branches. But the sycaminus is a mulberry, a fruit mentioned by Æschylus in his Phrygians, where he says of Hector, His heart was softer than a mulberry. And in his "Cretan Women" he says of the brier-- As the full branch to earth is weigh'd With mulberries, white and black and red. And Sophocles has the lines-- First you shall see the full white ear of corn, And then the large round rosy mulberry. And Nicander in his Georgics says that it is the first of all fruits to appear; and he calls the tree which bears it μορέα, as also do the Alexandrians-- The mulberry-tree, in which the young delight, Brown autumn's harbinger. 37. Phanias of Eresus, the pupil of Aristotle, calls the fruit of the wild sycamine μόρον, or mulberry, being a fruit of the greatest sweetness and delicacy when it is ripe. And he writes thus: "The mulberry is a briery sort of tree,[84:1] and when the round fruit is dried it has small pips of seed, woven in like net-work, and the fruit is nutritious and juicy." And Parthanius has the following words:--"Ἅβρυνα, that is to say, συκάμινα, which some call mulberries." And Salmonius calls the same tree βάτιον, or brier. And Demetrius Ixion says the συκάμινον and μόρον are the same, being a very juicy fruit, superior to the fig. And Diphilus of Siphnos, who was a physician, writes thus: "The συκάμινα, which are also called μόρα, are moderately full of good juice, but have not much nourishment; they are good for the stomach and easily digested; and those which are not quite ripe have a peculiar quality of expelling worms." But Pythemus states, according to Hegesander, that in his time the mulberry-trees produced no fruit for twenty years, and that during that time gout became so epidemic, that not only men, but even boys and girls, and eunuchs, and women, were afflicted with it; and even herds of goats were attacked with it, so that two-thirds of the cattle were afflicted with the same disorder. 38. With respect to the word κάρυα, the Attic writers and all other prose writers call nearly all berries by the generic name of κάρυα, _nuts_. And Epicharmus calls the almond "the nut," by way of distinction, as we do, saying-- We eat roast nuts, that is, almonds.