Note 617 — ARTICHOKE.

“I considered the heads of these poor Greeks as so many living inscriptions, which preserve to us the names mentioned by Dioscorides and Theophrastus. Though liable to different variations, they will, doubtless, be more lasting than the hardest marble, because they are every day renewed, whereas marble is effaced or destroyed. Inscriptions of this kind will preserve, therefore, to future ages the names of several plants known to those skilful Greeks who lived in happier and more learned times.”—Voyage du Levant, i. p. 34. Compare with the above what Haller says in his Biblioth. Botan. i. p. 28.