We now come to the plants which grow spontaneously, and which are employed as an aliment by most nations, the people of Egypt in particular, where they abound in such vast quantities, that, extremely prolific as that country is in corn, it is perhaps the only one that could subsist without it: so abundant are its resources in the various kinds of food to be obtained from plants.

In Italy, however, we are acquainted with but very few of them; those few being the strawberry,2142 the tamnus,2143 the butcher’s broom,2144 the sea2145 batis, and the garden batis,2146 known by some persons as Gallic asparagus; in addition to which we may mention the meadow parsnip2147 and the hop,2148 which may be rather termed amusements for the botanist than articles of food.