For by his mighty science he could take
As many forms and shapes in seeming wise,
As ever Proteus to himself could make:
Sometimes a fowl, sometimes a fish in lake.
Now like a fox, now like a dragon fell;

That of himself he oft for fear could quake,
And oft would fly away. O, who can tell

The hidden power of herbs, and might of magic spell!

We learn from Chaucer that Honesty (Lunaria), was one of the plants used in incantations; but he mentions it as "Lunarie." Drayton names

it as Lunary :

Then sprinkles she the juice of rue,
With nine drops of the midnight dew
From Lunary distilling.-Nymphid.

Spenser, quoted above, tells us that even the witches themselves could not escape herb penance :

When witches wont do penance for their crime,

I chanc'd to see her in her proper hue,

Bathing herself in origane and thyme.

The same poet shows us that, in superstitious times the magician was called in as well as the physician :

Beseeching him with prayer, and with praise,

If either salves, or oils, or herbs, or charms,

A foredone wight from door of death mote raise,

He would at her request prolong her nephew's days.

The plant is named Lunaria from the circular shape of its pod, which is thought to resemble the moon (Luna), not only in its form but in its silvery brightness. The title of Honesty appears to have been bestowed on this plant from the transparent nature of the pod, which discovers those seed-vessels that contain seed from such as are barren, or have shed their seed. According to Gerarde, the title was bestowed upon this flower by an English gentlewoman, whom our great bard makes to say,

Mine Honesty shall be my dower.

The Ivy.

This saves many animals from want and death in Autumn and Spring. In October it blooms in profusion, and its flowers become an universal banquet to the insect race. The great black fly, Musca grossa, and its numerous tribe, with multitudes of small winged creatures, resort to them also those beautiful animals, the latest birth of the year, the admiral and peacock butterflies. In its honey it yields a constant food,

till the frosts of November. In Spring, in the bitter months of March and April, when the wild products of the field are nearly consumed, the Ivy ripens its berries; and almost entirely constitutes the food of the missel-thrush, the wood-pigeon, and other birds. Journal of a Naturalist.

Golds, or Goldings.-Marigolds.

Golds is a very old name for the corn marigold, Chrysanthemum segatum, and is conjectured to be used for the same plant by Chaucer, in the Knight's Tale, when he says:—

Jalousie

That weved of yelwe golds a garland.

Drayton thus alludes to it in his Polyolbion :

The crimson darnel flower, the bluebottle and gold;

Which, though esteemed but weeds, yet for their dainty hues

And for their scent not ill.

The flower-buds of the marsh-marigold, preserved in vinegar, are a good substitute for capers, and were so used when capers were subject to import-duty, and sold at a much higher price than in the present day. The use of the flower in our cookery is told in Gay's line—'

Fair is the mary-gold for pottage meet.

The Andromeda.

Linnæus, in his Tour in Lapland, gives the following reason for thus naming this delicate shrub, one of those bog-plants not half so much cultivated as it deserves to be :

As I contemplated it, I could not help thinking of Andromeda, as described by the poets a virgin of most exquisite beauty and unrivalled charms. The plant is always fixed in some turfy hillock in the midst of the swamps, as Andromeda herself was chained to a rock in the sea, which bathed her feet, as the fresh water does the root of the plant. As the distressed virgin cast down her blushing face through excessive affliction, so does the rosy-coloured flower hang its head, growing paler and paler till it withers away. At length comes Perseus, in the shape of summer, dries up the surrounding waters and destroys the monsters, rendering the damsel a fruitful mother, who then carries her head erect.

Love-in-Idleness.

This is the very small old-fashioned purple pansy, more commonly called Pinkenney John; the cultivated garden variety of the Viola tricolor, or white pansy, to whose change of colour Shakspeare thus alludes :

Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell;

It fell upon a little western flower,

Before milk-white; now purple with love's wound,

And maidens call it Love-in-idleness.

:

Midsummer Night's Dream, ii. 2.

Trees in Wiltshire.

Aubrey gives the following interesting notes of trees, and their olden uses, in his Natural History of Wiltshire.

Hazel. We have two sorts of them. In the south part, and particularly Cranbourne Chase, the hazells are white and tough; with which there are made the best hurdles in England. The nutts of the Chase are of great note, and are sold yearly beyond sea. They sell them at Woodberry Hill faire, &c.; and the price of them is the price of a buschell of wheate. The hazell-trees in North Wilts are red, and not so tough, more brittle.

Buckthorne, very common in South Wiltshire. The apothecaries make great use of the berries for syrup, and the glovers use it to colour their leather yellow. Prick-timber is common, especially in North Wilts. The butchers doe make skewers of it, because it doth not taint the meate as other wood will doe, from whence it hath the name of prick-timber.

Yew-trees abound in Wiltshire. Aubrey tells us that when he learnt his "accidents, 1633, at Yatton Keynel," the boys took much delight in a fair and spreading yew in the churchyard, "and it furnish't them with their scoopes and nuttcrackers. The clarke lopt it to make money of it to some bowyer or fletcher, and that lopping kill'd it."

Service-trees grow naturally in various parts: "they operate as medlars, but less effectually." The botanical name is Sorbus, and Dr. Gale told Aubrey that Sarbiodunum, Old Sarum, has its denomination from Sorbes.

Elders "grow everywhere. At Bradford the side of the hill which faces the south is covered with them. I fancy that that part might be turned to better profit, for it is situated as well for a vineyard as any place can be, and is on a rocky gravelly ground. The apothecaries well know the use of the berries, and so doe the vintners, who buy vast quantities of them in London."

Whitty-tree," or wayfaring tree, is rare in this country. In Herefordshire they are not uncommon; and they used, when I was a boy, to make pinnes for the yoakes of their oxen of them, believing it had vertue to preserve them from being forespoken, as they call it; and they used to plant one by their dwelling-house, believing it to preserve from witches and evil eyes."

Berberries.—“ In the old hedges which are the boundes between the lands of Priory St. Marie, juxta Kington St. Michael, and the west field, which belonged to the Lord Abbot of Glastonbury, are yet remaining a great number of berberrytrees, which I suppose the nunnes made use of for confections, and they taught the young ladies that were educated there such arts. In those days there were not schooles for young ladies as now, but they were educated at religious houses."

[History furnishes us with an account of the ancient use of the barberry, carrying us back even to the Egyptians, who used the fruit as a remedy in fevers of the most pestilential character. It was macerated in water, and the strained liquor sweetened and taken freely as a drink. Old authors mention the use of the bark of the common barberry as a remedy for jaundice, but without laying much stress on its virtues. John Ray, however, used a decoction of it with decided success. We are the more desirous of making this known, from the earnest recommendation of the remedy by friends on whom we can depend. The inner bark, boiled in milk, or old ale, we are assured, has cured patients of jaundice who had been given up by professional skill.]

Strawberries in Colern woods, exceeding plentifull; the earth is not above two inches above the freestone. The poor children gather them, and sell them to Bathe; but they kill the young ashes by barking them to make boxes to put them in. Strawberries have a most delicious taste, and are so innocent that a

woman in childbed, or one in a feaver, may safely eat them; but I have heard Sir Christopher Wren affirm, that if one that has a wound in his head eates them, they are mortall. Methinks 'tis very strange. Quære the learned of this?

Plants in Pictures.

The ideal landscape of the early religious painters of Italy, (says Mr. Ruskin,) is absolutely right and beautiful in its peculiar application; but its grasp of nature is narrow, and its treatment, in most respects, too severe and conventional to form a profitable example when the landscape is to be alone the subject of thought. The great virtue of it is its entire, exquisite, and humble realization of those objects it selects; in this respect differing from German imitations of it, that there is no effort at any fanciful or ornamental modifications, but loving fidelity to the thing studied. The foreground plants are usually neither exaggerated nor stiffened; they do not form arches, or frames, or borders; their grace is unconfined, their simplicity undestroyed. Cima da Conegliano, in his picture of the church of the Madonna dell' Orto at Venice, has given us the oak, the beautiful "Erba della Madonna" on the wall, precisely such a bunch of it as may be seen growing at this day on the marble steps of that very church; ivy and other creepers, and a strawberry-plant in the foreground, with a blossom and a berry just set, and one half-ripe and one ripe, all patiently and innocently painted from the real thing, and therefore most divine. Fra Angelico's use of the Oxalis acetosella is as faithful in representation as touching in feeling. The forms that grow on the walls of Fiesole may be seen in their simple verity on the architecture of Ghirlandajo. The rose, the myrtle, and the lily, the olive and orange, pomegranate and vine, have received their fairest portraiture where they bear a sacred character; even the common plantains and mallows of the waysides are touched with deep reverence by Raphael; and indeed, for the perfect treatment of details of their kind, treatment as delicate and affectionate as it is elevated and manly, it is to the works of these schools alone that we can refer. And on this, their peculiar excellence, I should the more earnestly insist, because it is of a kind altogether neglected by the English school, and with most unfortunate result; many of our best painters missing their deserved rank solely from the want of it, as Gainsborough; and all being more or less checked in their progress or vulgarized in their aim.

Flowers as Decorations.

We cannot but admire the practice of the Church of Rome, which calls in the aid of floral decorations on her high festivals. If we did not feel convinced that it was the most bounden duty of the Church of England, at the present moment, to give no unnecessary offence by restorations in indifferent matters, we should be inclined to advocate, notwithstanding the denunciations of some of the early Fathers, some slight exception in the case of our own favourites. We shall not easily

forget the effect of a long avenue of orange-trees in the Cathedral of St. Gudule at Brussels, calling to mind as it did the expression of the Psalmist "Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God." The white lily is held throughout Spain and Italy the emblem of the Virgin's purity, and frequently decorates her shrines; and many other flowers, dedicated to some saint, are used in profusion on the day of his celebration. The oak-leaf and the palmbranch have with us their loyal and religious anniversary, and the holly still gladdens the hearts of all good Churchmen at Christmas—a custom which the Puritans never succeeded in effacing from the most cant-ridden parish in the kingdom. Latterly, flowers have been much used among us in festivals, and processions, and gala-days of all kinds—the dahlia furnishing, in its symmetry and variety of colouring, an excellent material for those who, perhaps, in their young days sowed their own initials in mustard-and-cress, to inscribe in their maturer years their sovereign's name in flowers. Flowering plants and shrubs are at the same time becoming more fashionable in our London ball-rooms.* No dread of "noxious exhalations" deters mammas from decorating their halls and staircases with flowers of every hue and fragrance, nor their daughters from braving the headaches and pale cheeks, which are said to arise from such innocent and beautiful causes. We would go one step further, and replace all artificial flowers by natural ones, on the dinnertable and in the hair.-Quarterly Review, No. 139.

Monkish Gardens.

Among the early moral and social influences of the Church of Rome, may be mentioned the great respect paid to the medicinal virtues of plants, by the people.

Amongst the ancient Britons, we know, the ranks of the priests were recruited from the noblest families: their education, which extended over a period of twenty years, comprehended the whole of the sciences of the age; and besides their sacred calling, they were invested with the power to decide civil disputes. Their dwellings and temples were situated in the thickest oak-groves, which were sacred to the Supreme Deity. The acorn, and above all, the parasitical misletoe, were held in high veneration; the latter was sought on the sixth day of the moon, and when found, was only cut by a priest of the highest rank, for it was accounted a sovereign remedy for all diseases. The practice of the healing art has ever commanded the esteem of the rudest nations: hence it was the obvious policy of the priests, or Druids, to study the properties of plants. Of their progress we have no record; but who knows

*We remember to have seen in the garden of a nurseryman at Brompton, at the close of a London season, a squadron of plants in pots, withered and drooping, and in some cases, dead. We inquired of the gardener the cause of this floral decay: "Why, sir," said the man," these plants have been out to so many parties during the season, that the heated rooms have almost killed them."-I. T.