1 8 THE PLANT-WORLD IN MARCH. 



its names. A mediaeval shepherd may have carried a 

 leathern pouch of this form, and he would have been 

 fortunate if it held as many pence as this pod does seeds. 

 The plant is now looked upon merely as a prolific weed ; 

 but formerly it was supposed to have many merits, and 

 " poor man's parmacetie " was among its numerous names. 

 Wild throughout the North of the Old World, it has 

 followed civilization into every temperate region, and 

 presents several varieties which the botanical student may 

 do well to study for practice in nice discrimination. One 

 of them has no petals, but ten stamens, instead of the 

 normal six. 



As our gaze is directed at this bit of wall, a more minute 

 flowering plant attracts our attention, as it springs from 

 among the velvety cushions of moss in the crevices whence 

 the mortar has long perished. Here on the top of the 

 wall it grows, the spring whitlow-grass. For its description 

 we will once more refer to John Gerard, " Master in 

 Chirurgerie " of three hundred years ago. " It is," he 

 says, " a very slender plant, having a few small leaves like 

 the least chick-weede, growing in little tufts, from the midst 

 whereof rises up a small stalk, nine inches long, on whose 

 top do growe verie little white flowers ; which being past, 

 there come in place small, flat pouches, composed of three 

 films ; which being ripe, the two outsides fall away, leaving 

 the middle part standing long time after, which is like 

 white satin." Its stalk is less often nine inches high than 

 two or three ; but otherwise this account is strikingly 

 graphic. The plant is very acrid, as are so many of the 

 mustard and cress family, to which it and the shepherd's- 

 purse alike belong, and this acridity was formerly believed 

 to be good for that painful disease of the nail known as a 



