92 NOTES. 



In Baptista Porta's curious Phyiognomonica (published 

 at the end of the sixteenth century) he says, speaking 

 no doubt of this same Epilobium, that the dried root 

 of the (Enothera smells of wine ; given as a drink it 

 soothes wild beasts and makes them tame, and rubbed 

 on the worst wounds it serves to heal them. 



NOTE V. 



THE CHRISTMAS ROSE. 



THE Christmas Rose is certainly one of the most 

 valuable of flowers, but it is a little capricious, growing 

 luxuriantly in one place, and in another gradually dwind- 

 ling off. With me it is always successful, and one secret 

 ma}' be that the roots are never allowed to be disturbed. 

 This beautiful flower has rather weird associations. It 

 is the Black Hellebore of Pliny, and was used as a 

 poison and in incantations. Spenser plants it with the 

 " dead sleeping poppy " and all other sad and poisonous 

 herbs in the garden of Proserpina. Often, however, it 

 was valued for its medicinal qualities, and was occa- 

 sionally, we are told, made use of by literary people for 

 the purpose of sharpening up their intellects. Gerard 

 says that " Black Hellebore is good for mad and furious 

 men, for melancholike, dull, and heavie persons, for those 

 that are troubled with the falling sickness, for lepers, for 

 them that are sicke of quartaine ague, and briefly for all 

 those that are troubled with blacke choler, and molested 

 with melancholic." Cowley, too, has a curious poem, 

 in which the Christmas-flower (as he calls it) speaks, and 



