1 8 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



regular practice, but finds a home in rustic pharmacy, some- 

 times as many as twenty berries being given as a dose.' 

 Lyte, in his translation of the Herbal of Dodon^eus quaintly 

 declares that " they be not meete to be ministered but to 

 young and lustie people of the countrie, who doe set more 

 store of their money than their lives," preferring rather 

 to risk hedgerow drugs and old wives' prescriptions than to 

 call in the trained practitioner. The berries are a good 

 deal used in veterinary practice. 



The berries when gathered in an unripe state yield a 

 yellow dye, employed for staining Turkey and Morocco 

 leather and other purposes, but if they be matured the 

 result is a green dyeing material. The berries pressed and 

 then boiled with a little alum make the pigment known 

 to painters in water-colour as sap-green. The stems have 

 also some little tinctorial value, or at least had in the past, 

 as in these latter days commercial facilities and enter- 

 prise bring to our shores the finest products of the world, 

 and the home-grown article cannot always compete with 

 them. A preparation of the stem, either as powder or in 

 form of a decoction, was once in repute as a tonic, and 

 as an application to inflamed eyes or obstinate cutaneous 

 trouble ; but here again the resources of the world have 

 supplanted what may once have been good by that which 

 is better. 



Botanically our plant is the Rhamnus catharticus, the 



' They are given being beaten into ponder from one dram to a dram 

 and a halfe : divers do number the berries, who give to strong bodies from 

 fifteen to twenty or more ; but it is better to breake them and boile them 

 in fat flesh broth without salt, and to give the broth to drinke. — Gerard, 

 Generall Historic of Plantes, 1633. The book passed through a great many 

 editions ; the date we assign is merely that on the title-page of our own copy. 



