Enquiry into Plants

xxii, seems to be constructed of thick, parallel timbers, so that the air may pass through more easily; just as the tholos, or vapor-room in baths. Hence, if some twig or extreme shoot of the Pinus Picea L., with its leaves densely arranged opposite one another, is inspected, a fitting similarity to the morphen tholoeide (dome-like form) will appear. (See Table, fig. B.) But if we consider the word kyneais (helmets), it has nothing in common with a fir branch. I substitute, with a slight change of one letter, the word ktaneais. The word ktanea itself is not found, but ktenos, the genitive of kteis, a comb, is very well known—in Doric, ktanos; and from an inspection of the twig of the Elate theleia, or Pinus Picea, the icon of which I have presented in Table, fig. B, one may conjecture that the Boeotian ktaneas was equipped with teeth on both sides facing each other, as in our boxwood and ivory ones, in English, "a double-toothed comb." It should also be noted that the word pteryga, the feather of a wing, signifies equally a wing; (see Hesychius) whence the winged leaf of the botanists of an earlier age is the pinnate leaf of Linnaeus. The words arren and theleia, which frequently occur in Theophrastus when describing plants, seem to indicate fertility or sterility, or a habit that is more or less robust, just as the word hippos (horse) prefixed in a compound to a plant name; and it is noteworthy here that the Elate arren (male fir) rarely matures its seeds before it reaches a more advanced age. In other places of the same author, however, this distinction into males and females is clearly indicated, for example in