WAYFARING-TREE 59 



the same tree, in these varying tints. Each contains one 

 seed. 



The bark is so acrid as to raise a blister, and thus 

 indicates its service in rustic medical treatment. In the 

 " Foure Bookes of Husbandry collected by Conradus 

 Herebachius, 'newely Englished and increased by Barnabe 

 Googe, Esquire," we read that " Nature hath appoynted 

 remedyes in a redynesse for al diseases, but the craft 

 and subteltie of man for gaine hath devised Apothecaries 

 Shoppes, in which a man's Lyfe is to be solde and bought, 

 where they fetche their medicines from Hierusalem, and 

 out of Turkic, whyle in ye mean time every poore man 

 hath the ryght remedyes growing in his Garden : for yf 

 men would make theyr Gardens theyr Physitions the 

 Physicions craft would soone decay." 



The bark furnishes a very efficient bird-lime to the village 

 bird-catcher, who pursues his craft;. more or less, we fear, 

 in defiance, or possibly in ignorance, of the various Small 

 Birds Protection Acts, close times, and the like ; secure in 

 the local sympathy for his work, deriving its strength 

 from the feeling that too often regards every bird as the 

 farmer's natural enemy, to be trapped, shot, or poisoned 

 without mercy. 



One old writer, puzzled to account for the name of 

 the plant, breaks into ponderous humour, and declares 

 that as this tree is so often found in the roadside hedge, 

 it is ever on the way, and is therefore a wayfarer. But 

 a more reasonable explanation would appear to be that 

 its grey foliage, looking as though covered with roadside 

 dust, suggests the wayfarer toiling travel-stained along the 

 highway. It is sometimes by the older herbalists called 



