x.] PLANTS AND PLANETS. 161 



Garden Bazil " is the herb which all authors are 

 together by the ears about, and rail at one another 

 (like lawyers). Galen and Dioscorides hold it not 

 fitting to be taken inwardly; and Chrysippus rails at 

 it with downright Billingsgate rhetoric; Pliny and 

 the Arabian physicians defend it." " Mizaldus affirms 

 that, being laid to rot in horse-dung, it will breed 

 venomous beasts. Hilarius, a French physician, 

 affirms, upon his own knowledge, that an acquaint- 

 ance of his, by common smelling to it, had a scorpion 

 bred in his brain. Something is the matter, this herb 

 and rue will not grow together, no, nor near one 

 another ; and we know rue is as great an enemy to 

 poison as any that grows." 



Bay-Tree. " It is a tree of the sun, and under the 

 celestial sign Leo, and resisteth witchcraft very po- 

 tently, as also all the evils old Saturn can do to the 

 body of man, and they are not a few ; for it is the 

 speech of one, and I am mistaken if it were not 

 Mizaldus, that neither witch nor devil, thunder or 

 lightning, will hurt a man in the place where a Bay- 

 tree is." 



Of the Chamomile he remarks : " Nichessor saith, 

 the Egyptians dedicated it to the sun, because it 

 cured agues, and they were like enough to do it, for 

 they were the arrantest apes in their religion I ever 

 read of." 



The Celandine is " called Chelidonium, from the 

 Greek word Chelidon, which signifies a swallow, 

 because they say, that if you put out the eyes of 

 young swallows when they are in the nest, the old 

 ones will recover their eyes again with this herb. 



