boraginace.t:. 113 



though not native. The only places where I have seen it thoroughly 

 naturalised are St. Aubin's Bay, Jersey, and Hunstanton, Norfolk. 



[England, Scotland, Ireland.] Annual or Biennial. Summer, 



Autumn. 



Stem 9 inches to 2 feet higli, very thick, succulent, branched in laro-e 

 specimens. Root leaves resembling those of Anchusa sempervirens, with 

 the lamina 3 to 7 inches long, and the petiole about as much more; 

 lower stem leaves stalked, the uppermost sessile. Racemes mostly in 

 pairs at the apex of the stem and branches, at fii-st rather comjmct, 

 but in fruit very lax, and from 3 to 7 inches long ; fruit pedicels drooping 

 1-^ to 2 inches long, longer than the lanceolate bracts. Calyx in fruit 

 f to f inch long. Corolla f to f inch across, brilliant blue; segments 

 ovate-triangular. Anthers nearly sessile, purplish black, connivent, 

 with a purple hornlike appendage on the back about half as long as the 

 anther. Nucules ^ inch long, dim, black, rough, with a white pul- 

 vums at the base projecting much, and filling up nearly the space 

 within the basal ring. Plant light green, hispid with vulnerant hairs 

 seated on tubercles of very unequal sizes. 



Common Borage. 



French, Bourraclie officinale. German, gehriiucJilicJie Boretsch. 



The Borage is one of our oldest garden herbs. It was highly valued by the 

 old herbalists as a cordial and pectoral, and is greatly extolled in all then- writino-s. 

 Gerarde says, " Those of our time douse the flowers in salads, to exhilarate and make 

 the minde glad. There be also many things made of them, used everywhere for the 

 comfort of the hart, for the di'iving away of sorrowe and increasing the joie of the 

 minde." Burton asserts in his " Anatomy of Melancholy," on the authority of many 

 classic writers, that Borage " was that famous nepenthes of Homer which Polydamna 

 Thonis's wife (then King of Thebes in Egypt), sent Helena for a token, of such rare 

 virtue that if taken steept in wine, if wife and children, father and mother, brother 

 and sister, and all thy dearest friends should die before thy face, thou couldst not 

 grieve or shed a tear for them. Helena's commended bowl to exhilirate the heart 

 had no other ingredient, as most of our criticks conjecture, than this of Borao-e." 

 Bacon remarks, that the " leaf of Burrage hath an excellent spu'it to repress the fuli- 

 ginous vapour of dusky melancholic." The seeds were administered by the ancient 

 physicians in low fevers and agues, being recommended by one of those superstitious 

 practitioners in doses of " three thryrses " in tertian and four in a quartan ncne. 

 Parkinson declares that all parts of the plant " are very cordiale, and helpe to expele 

 pensiveness and melanchoUe, that ariseth without manifest cause, whereof came the 

 saying, ' ego borago gaudia semper ago.' " Culpepper tolls us that " the leaves and 

 roots are a very cordial ; they are used in putrid and pestilential feavers, to defend the 

 heart and help to resist and expel the poyson or the venom of other creatures," and 

 adds, " the leaves, flowers, and seed, all or any of them, are good to expel pensiveness 

 and melancholy; it helpcth to clarifie the blood and mitigate heat in feavers." 

 Notwithstanding all these encomiums, we cannot ascertain that the plant possesses 

 any very active qualities, beyond those due to the presence of mucilage and a consi- 

 derable proportion of alkaline salts, particulai'ly nitrate of potash, which gives a 



VOL. VII. U. 



