COMMENTARY. The wind-flowers, so celebrated in ancient poetry, being a numerous genus, there has been some difficulty in determining exactly the species described by Dioscorides. He mentions two, the cultivated and the wild, and divides each into two varieties, according to the difference of colour in their flowers. The former may be set down as the _A. coronaria_, and the other as the _A. nemorosa_. The latter only is indigenous in this country, but the other is commonly cultivated in gardens. He recommends them principally as external applications, as for foul ulcers, in collyria for inflammation of the eyes, and in pessaries to promote menstruation. (ii, 207.) Galen and the succeeding authorities follow him. The anemone is not to be found in Celsus. For the Arabians, see Avicenna (ii, 2, 655); Serapion (c. 72); Rhases (Cont. l. ult. iii, 48); Ebn Baithar (ii, 100.) They do little more than copy from Dioscorides. The _A. pratensis_ occurs in the modern Greek Pharmacopœia (132.) Ἄνηθον, Anethum, _Dill_; it warms in the second degree intensely, and dries in nearly the same degree. When boiled in oil it is diaphoretic, anodyne, and soporific; and concocts crude swellings. But when burnt it becomes of the third order of heating and drying medicines, and is useful when sprinkled upon foul ulcers. But the green is more humid, and less hot and digestive. * * * * * COMMENTARY. Our author condenses and abridges the account of the dill (_Anethum graveolens_) given by Galen. Dioscorides, in his usual empirical style, recommends it for various purposes, such as promoting the flow of milk, stopping slight vomiting, opening the bowels, increasing the urine, proving useful to hysterical women in a hip-bath, and so forth. (iii, 60.) The Arabians as usual copy from both. See Avicenna. (ii, 2, 69.) Ἄνθυλλις, Anthyllis; there are two varieties, both of which are desiccant applications to ulcers; but that resembling the ground-pine consists of more subtile particles, so as to be beneficial in epileptic cases. It is also more detergent. * * * * * COMMENTARY. The former species, which Dioscorides describes and recommends for the cure of wounds, we would willingly refer to the _Anthyllis vulneraria_, but the predominance of authority is against it, and in favour of the _Cressa cretica_. The other is probably the _Ajuga Iva_. Avicenna joins Dioscorides in commending it as a vulnerary herb (ii, 2, 744), for which virtue the anthyllis was long celebrated, as its scientific name implies. Ἄνησον, Anisum, _Anise_; the seed is particularly acrid, eating, and drying in the third degree. Hence it is diuretic and dispels flatus. * * * * * COMMENTARY. Serapion and Avicenna, like the Greek authorities, call the _Pimpinella anisum_ diuretic and emmenagogue. It is now reckoned the first of the four hot seeds, the other three being carui, cumin, and fennel.