16i CHAPTERS ON BRITISH BOTANY. [June, 



they can scarcely be regarded as escapes from cultivation. 

 During a visit to Spa some years ago^ I also procured Maian- 

 themum bifolium and Centaurea tnontana, both common in the 

 woods there ; Trientalis europ(Ba, near the Fountain of the 

 Geronstere; and Arnica montana, whose bright orange-coloured 

 flowers were very conspicuous among the heather. 



I have omitted giving the synonyms by which many of the 

 plants are distinguished, from the fear of lengthening this 

 already extended article. 



I have marked with an asterisk those plants which do not 

 figure in the English Floras, even as introduced or doubtful. 



H. C. 



CHAPTERS ON BRITISH BOTANY. 



{Cordirmed from page 140.) 



Sir Thomas Brown, who takes a very judicious view of Biblical 

 Botany, believed that there were at least two kinds of Hyssop, 

 viz. one employed in the sacred act of sprinkling, and the other 

 one of the Capillaries, as the Filices were called in his time, a 

 proper contrast to the lofty Cedar. Celsius refines still more on 

 this point, for he calls Bryum truncatulum, Hasel., the Hyssop of 

 Solomon [Hyssopus Salomonis). 



Morseus, a learned physician of Paris, who wrote a commentary 

 on ' Schola Salernitana,' censures Lemnius for calling the Hyssop 

 spoken of in the Book of Kings a Fern, as if no other plant 

 could grow out of a wall but this. 



The Salernitan physicians understood under the name Hys- 

 sop more herbs than one : — 



" Hyssopus purgans herba est e pectore phlegma." 



These medieval doctors probably knew plants better than pro- 

 sody. Here is another version, not so faulty : — 



" Hyssopus est herba purgaus a pectore flegma." 

 " Hyssope a purgingherbe is held to be." 



It is not improbable that the name of the next herb. Salvia, 

 was applied to many other kinds of plants whose leaves resembled 

 the true Sage, and whose virtues might not be widely different : — 



" Ciu" inoriatur homo cui Salvia crescit in horto ? " 



