Note 256 — SOAP.

This plant was sent by Imperati to Casp. Bauhin, under the name of lanaria veterum; and the latter made it first known in his Pinax Plant. iv. p. 206. The former described it himself, and gave a bad engraving of it, in Hist. Nat. p. 871. Löffling found this plant on the Spanish mountains, as well as in the neighbourhood of Aranjuez; and he relates, that in the province of La Mancha the people boil clothes that are to be washed with the root of this plant instead of soap. Linnæus did not hesitate to declare the struthium of the ancients and the struthium of his system to be the same plant; and he gave his countrymen reason to hope that their Gypsophila fastigiata, which has a great resemblance to it, might be employed in the like manner.—Amœnitat. Academ. v. p. 329.