HERBS. + 383 
always depends on chopping the fresh green leaves very small. 
Take a handful of fresh Parsley, wash it, bruise the stalks, and 
boil them with the leaves for ten minutes in only a little water ; 
then chop them small, first picking out the tough woody pieces ; 
put them into a sauce boat, with some of the liquor in which 
they were boiled, and pour well-made white sauce (not rich 
with melted butter) over them. When ‘ Aux fines herbes” 
is directed in cookery, Parsley is practically intended, though 
a mixture of tarragon, Parsley, chervil, shalots, chives, basil, and 
mushrooms, chopped, and sweated in fat, may be signified as well. 
** One morning in the garden bed 
The onion and the carrot said 
Unto the parsley group : 
* Oh, when shall we three meet again, 
In thunder, lightning, hail, or rain ? ” 
* Alas!’ replied. in tones of pain 
The parsley, ‘ in the soup.’ ” 
Botanically, all the Parsleys show themselves singularly wise 
in their generation ; having many single, diminutive, insignificant- 
looking flowers (which furnish the nectar), they agree to unite 
these in one important-seeming umbel. Nevertheless, none 
but small fry, such as gnats, thrips, ants, and flies can effect 
entrance so as to possess themselves of the honey in the tiny 
florets ; and thus it is that the whole umbel by way of attractive- 
ness simply for such insects, displays only neutral work-a-day 
tints warranted to wear well, and to wash until thread-bare, 
instead of the brilliant blues, the warm reds, and the gay golden 
yellows, of those richly-decorated corolle which serve to allure 
painted butterflies, and lepidopterous lordlings. 
A good old custom of former times was to burn Rosemary 
(which is still cultivated in our kitchen gardens as a sweet- 
scented, fragrant herb) in the chambers of the sick, because of 
its supposed preservative powers against pestilentia] disorders. 
For the same reason a sprig of Rosemary was carried in the hand 
at a funeral. It was believed that smelling at the sprig afforded 
a potent defence against any morbid effluvia from the corpse. 
The shrub (Rosmarinus) has a pleasant scent, and a bitter, 
pungent taste, because of an essential volatile oil chiefly present 
in the leaves, and tops. Other fragrant active principles reside 
in the flowers. The name is derived from ros, dew, marinus, 
of the sea, in allusion to the grey, glistening appearance of the 
herb, and its natural locality near the sea, with an odour thereof- 
