SUCCULENT ROOTS. 255 



vegetables which, according to Beckmann, have been 

 banished by fashion; ' for this tyrant which rules with 

 universal sway commands the taste, as well as the 

 smell, to consider as intolerable, articles to which our 

 ancestors had a peculiar attachment.' 



Scorzonera was first known on account of its sup- 

 posed medicinal properties, but was afterwards culti- 

 vated as food in consequence of its agreeable flavour. 

 It was applied to this first purpose in the middle of 

 the sixteenth century in Spain, where it was esteemed 

 as an antidote to the poison of a snake, called there 

 scurzo. A Moor, it is said, who had learnt in Africa 

 that this plant possessed so valuable a property, 

 availed himself of the knowledge in effecting many 

 cures with the juices of the leaves and roots upon 

 peasants who had while mowing been bitten by these 

 venomous reptiles; but he carefully concealed the 

 plant, that he might retain to himself all the honour 

 and the profit attendant on the discovery. He was, 

 however, clandestinely followed to the mountains, 

 where he was observed to collect this plant, to which 

 the name of scurzonera or scorzonera was then given, 

 from the name of the snake, the venom of which it 

 was believed to render innocuous. The knowledge 

 was quickly disseminated. Petrus Cannizer trans- 

 mitted the plant, together with a drawing of it, to 

 John Oderick Melchion, physician to the queen of 

 Bohemia; and he, in his turn, lost no time in sending 

 it to Matthioli, who had not any previous knowledge of 

 the plant.* Soon after this Nicholas Monardes pub- 

 lished a tract, in which the particular virtue of these 

 roots was panegyrized. It is probable that in Spain 

 their adaptation as an edible substance was likewise 

 first discovered; and thence, about the beginning of 

 the seventeenth century, it was introduced into France. 

 The author of ' Le Jardinier Frangois,' who was a 



* Matthioli Epistol. Medicinal. 



