THE CORXEL 115 



means female ; but, as is familiarly brought to our 

 recollection by the old names " Male Fern " and " Lady 

 Fern," the ancient application of these sex terms to 

 plants had a purely figurative significance, generally 

 meaning only robust and less robust in growth. 



Though the wood of the Dogwood is not nearly so 

 hard as that of the Cornelian Cherry, we should 

 hardly term it spongy or useless : so that commen- 

 tators have suggested that Pliny is referring to a 

 very different plant, one of the Honeysuckles. Hart- 

 riegdl, meaning hard rail, is also obviously on 

 applicable to a hard wood ; but there can be little 

 doubt that Matthiolus was right in interpreting Virga 

 sanguinea or Bloody Twig, in another passage in 

 Pliny, as referring to the shoot or autumn leaves of 

 our common Dogwood. This interesting old com- 

 mentator upon Dioscorides not only records that 

 the people of Trent extracted an oil by boiling 

 the berries of the Dogwood, and used it in their 

 lamps; but he adds that if persons bitten by mad 

 dogs hold twigs of this tree in their hands until they 

 become warm they are driven mad. To this startling 

 statement Parkinson adds that " If one that is cured ot 

 the biting of a madde dogge, shall within one twelve 

 moneth after touch the Corn us fee m in a. or Do^e 

 berry tree, or any part thereof, the disease will returne 

 againe." 



Xo doubt before these u facts " were imagined 

 the bush had acquired the name of Dogwood, and 

 some explanation of that name was felt to be wanted. 

 In ^Elfrk-'s tenth-century vocabulary cornu* is 

 merely translated " corn-treow," and in one of the 



