Identifier: travelstodiscov05bruc (find matches)
Title: Travels to discover the source of the Nile, in the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 : in five volumes
Year: 1790 (1790s)
Authors: Bruce, James, 1730-1794 Russell E. Train Africana Collection (Smithsonian Institution. Libraries) DSI
Subjects: Bruce, James, 1730-1794 Natural history Explorers
Publisher: Edinburgh : Printed by J. Ruthven, for G.G.J. and J. Robinson, London
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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more agreeable purfuit of thepractical part of it, hath allured me, that, unlefs from baddrawings, he never had an idea of what this plant was tillI firft gave him a very fine fpecimen. The Count de Cay-lus fays, that having heard there was a fpecimen of thisplant in Paris, he ufed his utmoft endeavours to find it,but when brought to him, it appeared to be a cyperus of a very * Sir Jofeph Banks* xiv INTRODUCTION. a very common, well-known kind. With my own hands,not without fome labour and rifk, I collected fpecimensfrom byria, from the river Jordan, from two different pla-ces in Upper and Lower Kgypt, from the lakes Tzana andGooderoo in Abyffinia; and it was with the utmoft plea-fure I found they were in every particular intrinfically thefame, without any variation or difference, from what thisplant has been defcribed by the ancients; only I thoughtthat thofe of .Egypt, the middle of the two extremes, wereftronger, fairer, and fully a foot taller than thofe in Syriaand Abyilinia. OF
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London Publishtd Drmn WjjQf.by CRoimun ScCe. <^f < vaw^wjw S8«#E= Of PLANTS, SHRUBS, and TREES. PAPYRUS. THE papyrus is a cyperus, called by the Greeks Biblus.There is no doubt but it was early known in fcgvpt,iince we learn from Horus Apollo, the Egyptians, wilhingto defcribe the antiquity of their origin, figured a faggot,or bundle of papyrus, as an emblem of the food they firflfubfilted on, when the ufe of wheat was not yet known inthat country. But I mould rather apprehend that anotherplant, hereafter defcribed, and not the papyrus, was whatwas fubilituted for wheau, for though the Egyptians fuckedthe honey or fweetnefs from the root of the papyrus, it doesnot appear that any part of this cyperus could be ufed forfood, nor is it fo at this day, though the Enfete, the plant towhich I allude, might, without difficulty, have been ufed forbread in early ages before the difcovery of wheat; in feveralprovinces it holds its place at this day. The papyrus feems to me to have early

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