HIS PRACTICAL USE OF PLANTS. 95 



hyssop, sedge, and camomile, boiled first alone and then 

 with treacle. For dysentery, he found " an infusion of 

 camomile flowers a useful remedy." For jaundice, he 

 had a very simple cure, " two raw eggs with a little cold 

 water in the morning, and one egg about twelve o'clock, 

 another about seven in the evening, all in the same 

 manner, by which in a very few days the distemper 

 would subside and the colour resume its natural hue." 



As examples of plants he made practical use of: The 



gum of the gean (Prunus padus) he used as a substitute 



for gum arabic, being less transparent, but as strong. The 



common speedwell (Veronica officinalis) he made into a 



kind of tea, for which, though strong, he said, it once used 



to be employed in the country. From the fine-leaved 



heath (Erica cinerea), he brewed a kind of ale, said to 



have been used by our Pictish forefathers, and hence called 



" Picts' ale," the secret of which, it seems, we have now lost. 



Wood sorrel (Oxalis acetoselld), which is prettily called in 



Aberdeenshire " birdies' bannocks," he employed the leaves 



of, as soap ; and its juice, to take out ink, containing, as 



it does, oxalic acid. He was accustomed to put certain 



blades into his stockings next his feet, to keep them right 



when on any of his long excursions. In wandering about 



the country, he was always on the outlook for new 



practical uses of plants, and was thus vastly pleased one 



time, when in Forfarshire, to find that the factory girls 



there used a decoction of the avens (Geum urbanum] as 



an expectorant and tonic, to help them to get rid of 



the dust that settled in their lungs in their ill-ventilated 



flax factories. The lichen (Lecanora tar tared], called in 



Gaelic crotal, he used for dyeing a kind of brownish-purple, 



