HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



33 



come upon the portrait of one of my grandparents, 

 which was published about three hundred and fifty 

 years ago, or in the early half of the sixteenth 

 century (a.d. 1543) in a valuable old work in Latin. 

 This is a picture of a thistle, with a full and detailed 

 description of its peculiarities. Among other things 

 there stated, I find that my ancestors were fond of 

 hilly and well-wooded regions, bore white leaves, 

 which were narrower and paler than those of the 

 chamreleon, with not a few hairs and prickles. The 

 stem grew to a height of two cubits and more, and 

 the flowers were purple. It is further added that 

 the seeds of this plant (which, it must be remem- 

 bered, grew amidst a head of cottony hairs or pappus 

 like the seeds of other thistles), were chiefly employed 

 in medicine. Here lies the secret of future mischief 

 and difficulty. It was entirely due to this fact that, 

 after the period we have now reached, a great deal 

 of uncertainty began to be realised when the original 

 Bedegar was asked for. Meanwhile, the name had 

 been spreading, along with the article, far and wide, 

 until alike, in France and England, as well as in 

 Germany, Spain, and other lands, the famous 

 medicine was to be found. I find in a list of herbs 

 which was written six hundred )"ears ago (before books 

 began to be printed) that our name occupies an 

 honourable position. It may interest the reader if 

 I reproduce this early reference. Let it be remem- 

 bered that medicines were spoken of formerly, as 

 they still are in the East, as hot and cold. Some 

 herbs are mild, or between hot and cold ; and in 

 this list of mild plant medicines, three only are 

 named — Mirtiis, or Sweet Gale, Ai-noglosa, or the 

 Plantain, and Bedegar. The way in which the name 

 is spelt, however, has baffled some investigators, 

 although it may be easily explained. The entry is 

 as follows : — 



" Bedegrage.— ■S'//;;)! alba, Wit-thorn." 

 Wit-thorn of course is the same as White Thorn, 

 and simply translates Spina alba ; which in its turn 

 is a correct equivalent of Bedegar. When this 

 Arabic name became familiar to the Latin writers, 

 they treated it as a Latin word, and declined it as 

 the teacher says, so that sometimes it appeared as 

 Bedegaris ; and so it came in time to be written 

 Bedegrage by persons who wrote words according 

 to their sound, without knowing their meaning or 

 history. This curious mode of spelling opened the 

 way for still greater confusion, which was increased 

 by the custom of retaining the Arabic word "Al" 

 (as in algebra, alchemy, alkanet) before names 

 borrowed from that language. Thus I find our 

 family name written in the fifteenth century Albe- 

 deragi ! Who would have thought that Bedegar 

 could be so changed? Yet if we drop the "Al" 

 we shall find the remaining portion (Bederagi) is 

 exactly the same as Bedegrage, with just one letter 

 omitted. This slight change, however, has thrown 

 many a student off his guard, and even in the work 



which contains the name Albederagi I find a little 

 later on another description of the same thing under 

 the accurately-written name of Bedegar. This con- 

 fusion of names is, by the way, only a small portion 

 of the confusion which has been introduced in 

 connection with the article itself, as we shall pire- 

 sently see. Let us, however, for a moment follow 

 the names which we used in English and French to 

 set forth the meaning of Spina alba or Bedegar to their 

 final resting-place. In France the early translation 

 of the name was Espine blanche, the latter word 

 meaning simply "white"; but when Acantha leuca 

 and Leucacanthon, Spina alba and Alba spina came 

 to be confused, the French adopted the term 

 Aubespine, as well as Espine blanche, and the English 

 spoke of the Albespyne, or White thorn, meaning no 

 longer the original White-thistle, but the Hawthorn 

 or Maybush ! All this is exceedingly curious, and 

 shows what difficulties the genealogist has to en- 

 counter and overcome in tracing out the real history 

 of a plant from modem, back to the earliest times. 



Having in the foregoing study of my family history 

 shown to what changes the name Bedegar has been 

 liable, and to what different ideas its translation into 

 other tongues eventually gave rise, it is now 

 necessary that I should tell you of the other change 

 that was proceeding at the same time. It has been 

 shown that the seeds with their woolly appendage 

 or cottony pappus (the pappus is simply the calyx, 

 adapted to form a balloon for conveying the seed to 

 a distance), were the most valuable part of the plant 

 for medicinal purposes, and it is easy to suppose that 

 when these seeds could not be procured a substitute 

 with a similar nature and appearance would be intro- 

 duced, and called by the name which the genuine 

 article bore. I would not say that the herbalists of 

 the middle ages wilfully deceived people in this way, 

 though, from what I have read and heard about the 

 mandrake and other curious plants, I am sure they 

 were often capable of doing very mean things ; but 

 of this I am certain, that, somewhere about the 

 fifteenth century, the genuine article began to give 

 way to a spurious one, and Bedegar became the 

 name of something totally different from the white 

 thistle of early times. You may judge of the 

 surprise with which, after seeing the portrait of my 

 early ancestor already referred to, I one day came 

 across another portrait of Bedegar which had no 

 family resemblance to the former whatever. It 

 happened in this way. Many ages ago, there lived 

 (not at the same time however), two very famous 

 men named Theophrastus and Dioscorides, who 

 wrote some learned books on natural history. Some 

 centuries after, when printing was first employed for 

 the multiplication of books, the writings of these men 

 were presented to the public in both the Greek and 

 the Latin languages. Other students of nature, 

 inspired by these valuable but antiquated works, 

 undertook to follow up the investigations already 



