180 LEGUMINOS^ 



grow, few will be enabled to perfect many seeds. It is necessary, therefore, 

 to protect such as are produced, from extermination by the browsing of 

 cattle ; otherwise, not only would the progeny be cancelled, but also the 

 present generation cut off. And what more beautiful and simple expedient 

 could have been devised, than ordaining that the very barrenness of the soil, 

 which precludes the abundant generation by seed, should at the very same 

 time, and by the very same means, render the abortive buds (abortive for the 

 production of fruit) a defensive armour to protect the individual plant, and 

 to guard the scantier crop which the half-starved stem can bear 1 



" That such an armature is produced by the abortion, or partial develop- 

 ment of buds and branches, there is abundant proof ; for not only are thorns 

 found in every stage, varying from their simple dormant or winter state, 

 when, if opened, they contain the rudiments of leaves, through leaf -bearing 

 spines to rigid thorns on the one hand, or leaf -clad branches on the other ; 

 but the very organs, i.e., the buds, which, when the plant is half starved, are 

 partly developed as spines, and part only as branches, become, when an 

 abundant supply of nourishment is provided, altogether leafy branches ; the 

 buds have all been wholly developed, none have degenerated into thorns, 

 and the plant has been tamed. The Eest-harrow ■ is a familiar example 

 immediately in point; for of it there are two well-known varieties, called 

 Ononis sjnnosa, and Ononis inermis, from the circumstance of this being smooth 

 and destitute of thorns, while that is covered with them." 



This plant has the name of Rest-harrow, as well as its French name, 

 Arrete bosuf, because its long roots were formerly very troublesome in 

 arresting the course of the plough or harrow in the corn-field. Cultivation, 

 however, has greatly lessened its frequency in our fields. Its scientific name 

 is given on account of the fondness of asses for this plant, for to this animal 

 thorns and thistles seem alike agreeable. It had the old English name of 

 Cammock, and in France it was also termed La Bugrane. It is Die Hauhecliel 

 of the German, the Stalkruid of the Dutch, the Ononide of the Italian, and the 

 Detiene hucy of the Spaniard. The young sweet and succulent shoots may be 

 used as a pickle, or as a culinary vegetable ; and the long roots have the 

 sweet flavour of liquorice, and are sucked both by children and country 

 labourers to quench thirst. The author has often seen these roots thicker 

 than a finger, and she is informed by Calder Campbell, that in Inverness the 

 roots are often as large as a wrist, and that the children there sometimes suck 

 them all day long. Old physicians considered that a ^^se of the plant cured 

 delirium, and some other maladies ; and the Yellow Shrubby Eest-harrow 

 of the south of Europe {Ononis natrix) is said by Pliny to be obnoxious to 

 snakes, and to drive them away from the places where it grows. 



2. Small Spreading Rest-harrow {0. redindta). — Stems herbaceous, 

 spreading, viscid and hairy ; leaves all composed of three leaflets ; stipules 

 broadly egg-shaped; flowers solitary; calyx about as long as the corolla. 

 Plant annual. This species is found growing on sea-cliffs in the countries of 

 Devon and Wigton, also at Alderney, one of the Channel Isles. The chief 

 place of its growth, as a wild plant, is in the fields of the south of Europe, 

 and it was probably brought among ballast to the places here named. 



