FOOL'S PARSLEY. 139 



prove a sufficient safeguard. It flowers during July and 

 August. Haller, in his book on Swiss plants, published at 

 Berne in 1768, quotes many authorities to show that this 

 plant, on being eaten, has been productive o the most 

 violent symptoms, ending in some cases with delirium, 

 stupor, and death. Parkinson calls it the fool's hemlock, 

 but it may readily be distinguished from the hemlock, 

 not only by the pendulous floral leaves to which we 

 have already referred, but as being every way smaller, 

 and not having the strong disagreeable smell that 

 characterises the leaves of the hemlock, though Gerarde, 

 we notice, says " the whole plant is of a naughty 

 smell/' Such things are, after all, only relative, however, 

 and our assertion holds good, for though Gerarde's remark 

 is fairly true, the hemlock has a much naughtier smell, and 

 the difference in degree is sufficiently striking to distinguish 

 the one plant from the other. In addition to this, the 

 stems of the hemlock are freely spotted over with dull red 

 markings, a peculiarity that we do not find in the fool's 

 parsley : we have, therefore, two distinct characteristics by 

 which the hemlock and the fool's parsley can be distinguished, 

 not only from each other, but from everything else the 

 spotted stem of the one, the curious floral leaves of the other. 

 Hill, in his British Herbal, calls our plant the small hem- 

 lock, and Gerarde gives it the name of the "wilde hem- 

 locke." This latter term at first view seems a great 

 misnomer, for one plant seems as wild as the other, the true 

 hemlock as the fool's parsley ; but incidentally we find an 

 interesting little fact concealed in this name. The refer- 

 ence no doubt is this, that in those old days many indigenous 

 plants were cultivated in the gardens of the herbalists and 

 apothecaries, and the hemlock, dangerous as it is, has 



