JULY. 303 



long taper lanceolate leaves, forms a fine attractive 

 object in connection with the tall yellow Iris, or Flag, 

 and the lofty Water-Plantain (Alisma plant ago) . The 

 Golden Dock (Rumex maritimus), also, when the mas- 

 ses of its petals are tinged with gold and auburn, is a 

 beautiful object, but it is not common, and chiefly 

 confined to marshes. The acetose Docks, or Sorrels, 

 are familiar to most persons from the common Sorrel 

 (It. acetosd), being marked out by children in the 

 meadows, who are delighted with its acid taste, and to 

 the grown-up wanderer its leaf in summer is pleasant 

 to regale upon. The smaller species or Sheep's Sorrel 

 (.S. acetosella), is a plant of hills and dry pastures 

 where it flourishes in abundance, its hastate foliage 

 becoming of a rich red colour as the summer declines. 

 The Agrimony (Agrimonia eupatoria)* a well-known 

 simpler 's herb, now exhibits its yellow spikes of flow- 

 ers in most pastures that have been left for grazing, 



* Agrimony ?s very generally distributed, and its golden spikes appearing 

 after the hay-harvest, well mark the decline of the brightest period of the 

 year. It is much gathered for medicinal purposes, the leaves having a 

 slightly bitterish roughish taste, accompanied with an agreeable, though 

 weak, aromatic flavour. The flowers are in smell stronger, and more 

 agreeable than the leaves, and in taste somewhat weaker. They readily 

 give out their virtues both to water and rectified spirit. Infusions of the 

 leaves, which are not disagreeably tasted, may be drank as tea. Among 

 the " vertues of Agrimony," writeth TL-R.YER, in his black-letter Herball 

 (1562), " the herbe or seed dronken in wyne, delyvereth men from the 

 bloody flyxe, from the diseases of the liver, and the byting of serpentes." 

 It was also one of the magic herbs of power, and its wonder-working 

 influence is thus mentioned in an old English medical MS. published in 

 the Archeeologia, by the Antiquarian Society: 



" If it be leyd under mann's heed, 



He schal sleepyn as he were deed, 



He schal never drede ne wakyn 



Till fro under his heed it be takyn." 



The specific name, Eupatoria, refers to Mithridates Eupator, King of 

 Pontus, a great concoctor of remedies in his day, and famous for his anti- 

 dote to poisons. 



