168 FAMILY HERBAL, 



Honewort. Selinum siifoliis. 



A common plant in corn-fields and dry places, 

 with extremely beautiful leaves' from the root, 

 and little umbels of white flowers. It has its 

 English name from its virtues. Painful swellings 

 are in some parts of the kingdom called hones, and 

 the herb, from its singular effect in curing them, 

 has received the name of honewort, that is, hone- 

 herb. 



The root is long and white ; there rise from it, 

 early in the spring, half a dozen or more leaves, 

 which lie spread upon the ground, in an elegant 

 manner, and are all that is generally observed of 

 the plant. The stalks do not rise till the end of 

 summer, and these leaves decay by that time, so 

 that they are not known to belong to it. These 

 leaves are ei&'ht inches lonjr, and an inch and a half 

 in breadth : they are composed each of a double 

 row of smaller leaves, set on a common rib, with 

 an odd leaf at the end ; these are oblong, tolerably 

 broad, and indented in a beautiful manner. They 

 are of a fresh green colour ; they are the part of 

 the plant most seen, and the part to be used ; and 

 they are not easily confounded with those of any 

 other plant, for there is scarce any that has what 

 are nearly so handsome. The stalk is two feet high, 

 round, hollow, upright, but not very firm, and 

 branched toward the top. The leaves on it are 

 somewhat like those from the root, but they have 

 not the singularity of those beautiful and numerous 

 small ones ; the flowers arc Jittle and white, and 

 the seeds are small, flatted, striated, and two of them 

 follow every flower. 



The loaves arc to be used ; they are to be fresh 

 gathered and beat in .a marble mortar into a kind of 

 paste. They are to be laid on a swelling that is 



