HKB
People of more robust and strong constitutions? bessides the hazard of being mistaken in the Names of divers Simples, not as yet fully agreed upon among the Learned in Botany.
There are bessides several remaining, which tho' Abdicated here with us, find Entertainment still in Foreign Countries: As the large Heliotrope and Sun-flower (e're it comes to expand, and shew its golden Face) which being dress'd as the Artichoak, is eaten for a dainty. This I add as a new Discovery. I once made Macaroons with the ripe blanch'd Seeds, but the Turpentine did so domineer over all, that it did not answer expectation. The Radix Personata mounting with their young Heads, Lysimachia siliquosa glabra minor, when fresh and tender, begins to come into the Sallet-Tribe. The pale whiter Popy, is eaten by the Genouese. By the Spaniards, the tops of Wormwood with Oyl alone, and without so much as Bread; profitable indeed to the Stomach, but offensive to the Head; As is also Coriander and Rue, which Galen was accustom'd to eat raw, and by it self, with Oyl and Salt, as exceedingly grateful, as well as wholsome, and of great vertue against Infection. Pliny, I remember, reports it to be of such effect for the Preservation of Sight; that the Painters of his Time, us'd to devour a great quantity of it. And it is still by the Italians frequently mingled among their Sallets. The Lapatha Personata (common Burdock) comes now and then to the best Tables, about April, and when young, before the Burrs and Clots appear, being strip'd, and the bitterness soaked out, treated as the Chardoon, is eaten in Poiverade; Some also boil them. More might here be reckon'd up, but these may suffice; since as we find some are left off, and gone out, so others be introduc'd and come in their room, and that in much greater Plenty and Variety, than was ever known by our Ancestors. The Cucumber it self, now so universally eaten, being accounted little better than Poyson, even within our Memory, as already noted.
To conclude, and after all that has been said of Plants and Salleting, formerly in great esteem, (but since obsolete and quite rejected); What if the exalted Juice of the ancient Silphium should come in, and challenge the Precedency? It is a [43]Plant formerly so highly priz'd, and rare for the richness of its Taste and other Vertues; that as it was dedicated to Apollo, and hung up in his Temple at Delphi; So we read of one single Root brought to the Emperor Nero for an extraordinary Present; and the Drug so esteem'd, that the Romans had long before amass'd a quantity of it, and kept it in the Treasury, till Julius Caesar rob'd it, and took this away, as a thing of mighty value: In a word, it was of that Account; that as a sacred Plant, those of the Cyrenaic Africa, honour'd the very Figure of it, by stamping it on the Reverse of their [44]Coin; and when they would commend a thing for its worth to the Skies, [Greek: Bat-ou silphion], grew into a Proverb: Battus having been the Founder of the City Cyrene, near which it only grew. 'Tis indeed contested among the Learned Botanosophists, whether this Plant was not the same with Laserpitium, and the Laser it yields, the odoriferous [45]Benzoin? But doubtless had we the true and genuine Silphium (for it appears to have been often sophisticated, and a spurious sort brought into Italy) it would soon recover its pristine Reputation, and that it was not celebrated so for nothing extraordinary; since bessides its Medicinal Vertue; it was a wonderful Corroborater of the Stomach, a Restorer of lost Appetite, and Masculine Vigour, &c. and that they made use of it almost in every thing they eat.