176 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



depreciation of his discovery, it would be as difficult, one 

 would imagine, to indicate the time or place of this striking 

 find as to say who first discovered a rook or a flint 

 stone. Others have it that the name is derived from the 

 sambucus, a primitive musical instrument which some would 

 tell us was strung like a guitar, but which seems more 

 probably to have been of bag-pipe type, that had its pipes 

 made out of hollowed elder-stems, but it is much more 

 probable that in such a case the plant gave the name to 

 the instrument than that the reverse took place. Still, it 

 is a pretty problem to be threshed out, the question at 

 stake being — Did the sambucus give its name to the 

 sambucus .'' or, on the other hand, discarding this idea, was 

 the sambucus so called from the sambucus ^ When this 

 knotty question is settled there remains yet another — If the 

 sambucus really was of bag-pipe type, could it be truthfully 

 described as a musical instrument at all .? ^ 



The leaves of the elder are, as our illustration shows, 

 of pinnate form, and ordinarily consist of two lateral pairs 

 of leaflets and a terminal. One occasionally finds a very 

 curious variation where the leaflets are deeply cut into 

 very numerous and irregularly formed segments, or, as 

 it is technically called, laciniated. We found a good 

 example of this in a hedge near Worthing while preparing 

 our illustrations, but the form is so entirely abnormal that 

 one could not well here introduce it. Gerard, in 1633, 



' The Lincolnshire bag-pipes. I beheld these as most ancient, because 

 a very simple sort of Musick, being little more than an Oaten pipe improved 

 with a bag, wherein the imprisoned wind pleadeth melodiously for the 

 Inlargement thereof. It is incredible with what agility it inspireth the heavy 

 heels of the Country Clowns, probably the ground-work of the poetical 

 fiction of dancing Satyrs. — Fuller. 



