32 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



article of sale under the name of Portland sago: it 

 entered largely into the manufacture of hair-powder. It 

 was also employed as a starch in the preparation of the 

 elaborate ruffles affected by our ancestors hence the 

 plant is in some old books called starchwort. The 

 cuckoo-pint was formerly largely employed as a reme- 

 dial agent, but this use or misuse is now altogether 

 a thing of the past, its effect being much too violent 

 and uncertain to render its administration at all ad- 

 visable. A drachm weight of- the plant, either in its 

 green state or dried, was at one time held to be a specific 

 for the plague, and its leaves were applied externally 

 to wounds, a proceeding we should imagine of great 

 danger, and a pointed illustration of the remark one hears 

 from time to time of the remedy in some given case being 

 worse than the disease. Another favourite mediaeval pre- 

 scription equally dangerous was the use of the water in 

 which arum roots had been boiled as an application to 

 the eyes when the sight is dim, or when, as one old writer 

 delicately puts it, "by some chance they become black 

 and blue." 



