THE SPIXDLE-TREE. 27 



tree, points to another of its uses. We nowadays 

 associate the idea of spindles with gigantic cotton-mills 

 and the ceaseless whirr and vibration of machinery ; but 

 the name was bestowed long before the power of steam 

 was pressed into service, and the spindle referred to was 

 the homelier form associated with the distaff things 

 that are now little more than a memory of the past. Fusus 

 is the Latin word for a spindle, and by some of the old 

 writers our plant was called the Fusanum and the Fusoria, 

 and by the Italians it is still called the Fusano, and by 

 the Germans the Spindelbaum. In France it is ordi- 

 narily the Fusin, though they sometimes call it Priest's 

 Cap, the form of the fruit being somewhat suggestive 

 of the biretta worn by the priesthood. The four lobes 

 of the fruit were also the cause of the plant being called 

 by some of the medieval writers the Tetragoma and 

 the Quadratoria. Parkinson, in his "Theatrum Botani- 

 cum," suggests that it might very well be called the 

 square-berried tree ; but the name is evidently one of his 

 own composition, and we find no indication anywhere, 

 either in his books or others, that the suggestion was ever 

 adopted. The spindle-tree is also in some old herbals 

 called the skewer-wood or the prick-wood, and gatter, 

 gatten, or gadrise. Chaucer, in one of his poems, calls it 

 the gaitre. 



Prior, in his altogether excellent book on plant-names, 

 explains these old words as follows : The first is from 

 the Anglo-Saxon words gatJ, a goad, and treow, a tree ; 

 the second is made up of gad again, and tan, a twig; 

 while the third is again gad, and hris, a rod. The same 

 hardness that fitted it, as we have seen, for skewers, 

 spindles, and the like, made it equally available for the 



