824 



fully on the shore at Ryde, (Syn. edit. Dillen. p. 139, see note below), 

 doubtless on what is now called the Dover, and where it lingered in 

 defiance of the changes that have converted that waste into a part of 

 this populous town, till within a very few years back, having myself 

 gathered it there in tolerable plenty on one spot, but it has now quite 

 disappeared from every part of this neighbourhood. Mr. Wm. W. 

 Saunders noticed it, as he believes, some years ago not unfrequently 

 about the town, and I have certainly gathered it in other places be- 

 sides the Dover, although it has always seemed to me very uncommon 

 at Ryde, and I believe it is at present all but, if not quite, extinct 



that Turner makes no mention of M. perennis under the head of Mercury (Hero, part 

 2nd, p. 55). After a short account of the plant he thus proceeds : " By thys descrip- 

 tion it is playn that our forefathers have erred in England which hitherto in the most 

 parte of all England have used another herhe in the stede of the ryghte Mercury. 

 Therfbre as many as had leuer ete whete than acornes, let them use no mere theyr old 

 Mercury, but thys Mercury (M. annua) whych Dioscorides describeth. The ryght 

 Mercury groweth comon in the fields and wynyardes of Germany without any settyng 

 or sowyng. And it beginneth now to be knowen in London, and in Gentle mennis 

 places not far from London. I neuer saw it grow more plentuously in all my lyfe 

 than about Wormes in Germany.'' What the false Mercury may be which Turner 

 alludes to above is not clear, it can hardly be M. perennis, if all that is said of its 

 poisonous properties be true, since it would seem to have been used instead of M. 

 annua in "sallettes and mouses" (Gem'dse, Germ.). It was most likely Chenopodium 

 Bonus Henricus, one of the old names for which was English Mercury, a plant much 

 used by our forefathers in lieu of greens or spinage. It is observable that Turner 

 does not apply the name of French Mercury to M. annua, which was probably im- 

 posed on it at a later period, when it was better known and more plentiful than when 

 he wrote. I should infer from Turner's words given above, that the Annual Mercury 

 was at first purposely grown as a pot-herb, which those of Gerarde (em. p. 332) seem 

 to confirm, where he says, " French Mercury is sowen in kitchen gardens among pot- 

 herbs. I found it under the dropping of the Bishop's house at Rochester; from 

 whence I brought a plant or two into my garden, since which time I cannot rid my 

 garden from it.'' It seems to have been more used medicinally than dietetically, and 

 to have soon gone out of use as a pot-herb, being scarcely mentioned as such by Ge- 

 rarde and Parkinson. I think I have adduced sufficient evidence to show that M. 

 annua was once a much rarer plant in this country than at present, and that the pre- 

 sumption amounts almost to a demonstration of its having been imported originally 

 from the continent as a garden production. I may here remark that Impatiens Noli- 

 me-tangere was regarded as a kind of Mercurialis by these old herbalists, and which 

 Parkinson tells us was found in his time "by an industrious Gentleman and Herbalist 

 Mr. George Bowles, by the shadie wood sides of the mountains and their vallyes in 

 Wales," a fact which, as it is confirmed by botanists of the present day, sufficiently 

 refutes the unreasonable doubt sought to be attached to this widely-spread European 

 plant as a genuine, indisputable native. 



