The Digital Ark: Early Modern Collections of Curiosities in England and Scotland, 1580-1700
Pietro Gregorio Mattioli (1501 - c. 1577)
Alias Matthiolus
Linked print sources: as Author (in assoc. with a ms or print source) - Petri Andreae Matthioli Medici Senensis Commentarii, in Libros sex Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei, de Materia Medica, Adjectis quàm plurimis plantarum & animalium imaginibus, eodem authore, also known as Commentarii.
as Subject of/in a document - One Hundred and One Botanists.
References in Documents:
an inch and ½ broad in the middle, flat, and somewhat
sharp at both ends.
Bauhinus
Figure hereof both out of
Avellana Indica. 'Tis also curiously figur'd in
but with the same Name. And with the same, described
by
Nut.
Whereas in truth it is the Stone of a kind of Fruit like a
great
Peach, and bigger; in which there are commonly
two of these Stones.
That which
saith Sugar: saving that,
whereas this is
made of the Juyce expressed and boil'd;
that of the Ancients,
as is likely, was only the Tears;
which
bursting out of the Cane, as the Gums or Milks of
Plants are used to do, were thereupon
harden'd into a pure
white Sugar. That the Sugar of the Ancients
was the
simple Concreted Juyce of a Cane, He well conjectures:
and what is above said of
the Mambu, may argue as much.
But that
it was the Juyce or Tears of the Sugar-Cane,
he
proves not. Nor, I think, could be, if, as is supposed, it
was, like Salt, friable, and hard. And
in affirming our Sugar
to be the same for substance with that of the Ancients, he
much mistakes; that being the simple Juyce of the Cane,
this a compounded Thing, always
mixed either with the
Salt of Lime, or of Ashes; sometimes of Animals too.