11 
Wycombe Wild Flowers. 
I.—THE NIGHTSHADE FAMILY (Solanacee). 
és : came to passe that three boyes of Wisbich in the Ie of 
Ely did eate of the pleasant and beautiful fruit hereof, two 
whereof died in lesse than eight houres after that they had eaten 
of them. The third child had a quantitie of hony and water 
mixed together given him to drinke, causing him to vomit often:. 
God blessed this meanes and the child recovered.” 
The ‘‘Three Boyes of Wisbich’’—especially the Two who died— 
seem to us worthy of exaltation to the very highest pinnacle of 
the Temple of Shocking Examples erected by the nurses of Great 
Britain for the benefit and warning of those under their care. 
Children, we are all aware, have in them from birth almost, a 
predilection for testing the quality of every object which they see 
around them, by selecting a small portion thereof for immediate 
consumption. Shem, Ham, and Japhet, with their wives and 
cattle (we allude to their representatives in the ‘‘ Noah’s Arks”’ 
of infancy), are all very well while what we may term the suck- 
ing stage of childhood lasts: but when the gnawing epoch suc- 
ceeds, accompanied by the acquirement of the rudiments of 
walking, a wider sphere opens before the young and inquiring 
mind; out-door objects—earwigs and ants, for example—are 
devoured with relish, and herbs of various properties serve as 
sauce. A nursemaid in herself is powerless to prevent this: but 
arm her for the occasion with the tragical tale of the Three, and 
the horrible fate of the Two ‘Boyes of Wisbich;’’ let her be 
taught to narrate it in simple, but forcible language; and the 
infantile imagination must shudder at the scene presented to it, 
and the varied diet may be desisted from. 
Does this seem a strange way of beginning a paper upon 
Wycombe Wild Flowers? Let us then, without further delay, 
proceed to our subject, to which the above is not wholly 
c 
