COMMENTARY. The former is evidently the flower of a wild species of the _Vitis Vitifera_, L. It is still used for giving a flavour to wine. Dioscorides gives an ample account of its medicinal virtues. Its power, he says, is astringent, and hence it is stomachic and diuretic, restraining fluxes of the belly and spitting of blood; it acts beneficially when applied dry, as a cataplasm for loss of appetite and acidity of the stomach; it forms an embrocation with vinegar and rose-oil in headache; a cataplasm that restrains inflammation, when applied to recent wounds; to incipient fistula lachrymalis, and ulcers in the mouth, and spreading ulcers in the pudenda, when rubbed in with honey, saffron, rose-oil, and myrrh: it is made an ingredient of pessaries for restraining bleeding, and for defluxions of the eyes and burning of the stomach it is applied as a cataplasm with the flour of wheat and wine: when burnt upon heated coals in a shell it forms an ophthalmic application, and cures whitlow, pterygia, loose and bloody gums, with honey. (v, 5.) This account of it is copied literally by Serapion. (De Simpl. c. 35.) See also Avicenna (ii, 2, 723) and Rhases (Cont. l. ult. i, 745.) This would certainly appear to us to be the Œnanthe of Celsus, who gives it a place among the diuretics. (iii, 21.) With regard to the herb of the same name, which, as our author remarks, is described by Dioscorides, various conjectures have been advanced. It is certain that it cannot be the _Œnanthe crocata_, but may be the _O. Pimpinelloides_. We have nothing to add to the account of its medicinal powers given by our author from Dioscorides. In fact, with the exception of Oribasius, whose description of the articles in the Materia Medica is professedly taken from Dioscorides, we are not aware that any other ancient authority has noticed it. We may mention, in conclusion, that the _Œ. Pimpinelloides_, although it has no place in our Dispensatory, is still not unknown to the collectors of drugs. See Gray (Suppl. to the Pharm. 79.) It grows in abundance on a spot in Banchory Ternan, and we have ascertained that it is not wholly innocuous even to cattle when eaten by them. Οἶνος, Vinum, _Wine_, belongs to the second order of heating and desiccative medicines. But that which is considerably old belongs to the third, and the sweet wine to the first.