166 TALKS AFIELD. , 



abroad the fitches and scatter the cummin, 

 and cast in the principal wheat, and the ap- 

 pointed barley, and the rye in their place ? 

 . . . The fitches are not threshed with a 

 threshing instrument, neither is a cart-wheel 

 turned about upon the cummin, but the 

 fitches are beaten out with a staff and the 

 cummin with a rod." The cummin here 

 mentioned is another of the aromatic, cara- 

 way-like products of the parsley family. 

 The nutmeg-flower, now rarely seen in gar- 

 dens, is akin to the conmion Damascus ni- 

 gella or mist-flower, a plant known to roman- 

 tic minds as love-in-the-mist. To the Lat- 

 ins the nigella or nutmeg-flower was known 

 as gith or git. There appears to have been 

 a time some three hundred and more years 

 since when the curious in history and science 

 were uncertain to what plant the name gith 

 was applied. Its seeds were no doubt 

 brought into Western Europe at that time, 

 and so closely do they resemble those of the 

 cockle that this latter plant assumed the 

 name of the gith. The black seeds of the 

 true gith gave it in Greek the more clas- 

 sic names melanospermon and melanthion. 

 When the cockle was found to be a much 

 different plant from the gith, it received two 



