Atkins, Sarah: Relics of antiquity, exhibited in the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum: with an account of the destruction and recovery of those celebrated cities (London: St. Harris, St. Paul's Church-Yard, 1825)

THE PAPYRUS.

Ill

any immediate profit. It was not without some
interest that, on visiting this place, I first beheld
that useful plant, which, though only a humble
reed, has attained more celebrity than the ever-
verdant cedar of Lebanon, the luxuriant palm of
India, or the spreading banian of the East, be-
neath whose graceful foliage the weary native
loves to shelter himself from the piercing rays of
a vertical sun. Smile, reader, if you please,
when you hear me assert, that I touched,
with feelings approaching those of respect and
veneration, the most precious treasure of the
ancients, the humble and modest plant, through
whose medium we have obtained authentic re-
cords of the public and private history of some
of the greatest men of which antiquity can boast,
and of the actions by which they rendered them-
selves illustrious, as well as the fruits of their
long and elaborate investigations in literature
and knowledge, handed down to us in the
form of treatises, essays, and poems, which
must, without its aid, have been for ever buried
in oblivion.
The roots of the papyrus are large and creep-
ing. The stem which rises from, them is many
feet in height, and terminates in a very large and
compound umbel, or rather cyme, of innumerable