COMMENTARY. Apuleius enumerates three species and recommends them for coughs. (c. 122.) Galen and Dioscorides also describe the same number of species, which may be referred—the 1st, to the _Origanum Heracleoticum_, L.; the 2d, to the _O. onitis_; and the 3d, to _O. sylvestre album_. Dioscorides describes the particular uses of these plants so fully that we cannot find room for his separate articles on each. Suffice it to say, that he sets down the first as being laxative, emmenagogue, and expectorant. (iii, 29, 30, 31.) Galen, like our author, merely states the properties of the _Origana_ in general terms. The Arabians call the origanum diuretic and vermifuge. They copy, as usual, from the Greeks. See Serapion (c. 310), Avicenna (ii, 2, 526), and Rhases (Cont. l. ult. i, 125.) The _Origanum Smyrnæum_ occurs in the modern Greek Pharmacopœia (121.) Ὁρεοσέλινον, Apium montanum, _Mountain Parsley_, has powers like those of parsley, but stronger. * * * * * COMMENTARY. Dioscorides says of this article (_Selinum Oreoselinum_? or _Athamanta Libanotis_?), that it is diuretic and emmenagogue, and an ingredient in antidotes, and in diuretic and heating remedies. (iii, 69.) Galen and the other Greek authorities treat of it in general terms along with its congeners; and the Arabians do the same under _Apium_. See in particular Avicenna (ii, 2, 55); Serapion (De Simpl. 290); Rhases (Cont. l. ult. i, 69.) Serapion’s Arabian authorities represent the Apium montanum as being laxative, carminative, deobstruent, diuretic, and, in some cases, emetic. The _Athamanta Libanotis_ is still to be found in the shops of the apothecaries, where it retains its ancient characters. Gray (Suppl. to the Pharmacop. 81.) Some of the commentators on Dioscorides take it for the article we are treating of. Ὀροβάκχη, Orobanche, _Holly Rose_, belongs to the first order of the desiccative and cooling temperament. * * * * * COMMENTARY. It appears unquestionably to be the _Orobanche Caryophyllea_. See Sibthorp. (Fl. Græca. i, 440.) Dioscorides merely states of it, that it was eaten as a potherb both raw and boiled. The other authorities treat of it very succinctly. We have not been able to discover any traces of it in the works of the Arabians. Ὄροβος, Ervum, _Bitter Vetch_, or _Tare_, is heating in the first degree, and desiccative in the second. It is also bitter, and therefore is incisive, detergent, and deobstruent. When taken in too great a dose it occasions bloody urine. * * * * *