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The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6) cover

The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6)

Chapter 222: CHAP. 37.—THE TRAGOS OR SCORPIO; THE MYRICA OR BRYA; THE OSTRYS.
By the Elder Pliny
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The work assembles systematic observations on animals, insects, and trees, combining natural history with practical notes. It surveys insect forms and habits, including bees, silk‑producing worms, spiders, and parasitic species, and discusses reproduction, classification, diseases, and useful products like honey and silk. It then examines animal anatomy in detail, limb by limb and organ by organ, comparing organs, vital functions, and bodily peculiarities across species. Later sections catalogue trees and exotic plants, describing aromatic gums, spices, frankincense, myrrh, and methods for producing and testing unguents and perfumes, and noting their uses and regions of origin.

CHAP. 37.—THE TRAGOS OR SCORPIO; THE MYRICA OR BRYA; THE OSTRYS.

Asia, too, produces the tragos967 or scorpio, a thorny shrub, destitute of leaves, with red clusters upon it that are employed in medicine. Italy produces the myrica, which some persons call the “tamarix;”968 and Achaia, the wild brya,969 remarkable for the circumstance that it is only the cultivated kind that bears a fruit, not unlike the gall-nut. In Syria and Egypt this plant is very abundant. It is to the trees of this last country that we give the name of “unhappy;”970 but yet those of Greece are more unhappy still, for that country produces the tree known as “ostrys,” or, as it is sometimes called, “ostrya,”971 a solitary tree that grows about rocks washed by the water, and very similar in the bark and branches to the ash. It resembles the pear-tree in its leaves, which, however, are a little longer and thicker, with wrinkled indentations running down the whole length of the leaf. The seed of this tree resembles barley in form and colour. The wood is hard and solid; it is said, that if it is introduced into a house, it is productive of painful deliveries and of shocking deaths.