Pliny: Natural History, Vol. IV

wrinkles and colouring either. Pepper is adulterated with juniper berries, which absorb its pungency in a remarkable manner, and in the matter of weight there are several ways of adulterating it.

Other Indian trees. XV. There is also in India a grain resembling that of pepper, but larger and more brittle, called the caryophyllon clove, which is reported to grow on the Indian lotus-tree; it is imported here for the sake of its scent. There is also a thorn-bush bearing an extremely bitter fruit that has a resemblance to pepper; this shrub has small thickly clustering leaves like the cyprus; the branches are 4 1/2 feet long, the bark of a pale colour, and the root wide-spreading and woody, of the colour of box. This root boiled in water with the seed in a copper vessel produces the medicine called lycion a medicinal extract from barberry. The thorn in question also grows on Mount Pelion, where it is used for mixing with a drug, as also are the root of the asphodel, ox-gall, wormwood, sumach and the lees of olive oil. The best lycion for medicinal purposes is the kind that makes a froth; this is imported from India in leather bottles made of camel skin or rhinoceros hide. The shrub itself is sometimes known in Greece under the name of Chiron’s buckthorn.

Indian bark. XVI. Another substance imported from India is macir a medicinal bark, the red bark of the large root of a tree of the same name, which I have been unable to identify. This bark boiled with honey is considered in medicine to be a valuable specific for dysentery.

Sugar. XVII. Arabia also produces saccharon sugar, but that grown in India is more esteemed. It is a kind of honey that collects in reeds, white like gum, and brittle to the teeth; the largest pieces are the size of a filbert. It is only employed as a medicine.