298 WILD FLOWERS. 



in what our more sophisticated age terms " chicken 

 broth," but which sturdy old Gerarde styles 

 with an attention to matter-of-fact readily appre- 

 ciated by any managing housewife "broth of a 

 hen!" 



As a natural result of the extended knowledge 

 and commercial intercourse which have placed more 

 potential agents in our hands, the veronicas are not 

 now included in our materia medica ; and their 

 qualities may be summed up in a very few words : 

 the whole of them being astringent, while the brook- 

 lime (V. beccabunga), is anti- scorbutic, on which 

 account its mild and succulent leaves are frequently 

 employed in early spring salads. The Welsh pea- 

 santry, so far as my own observation extends, still 

 "attribute greate virtues to the same/' just as 

 Gerarde describes them to have done in his time ; 

 and the employment of the germander, and common 

 speedwells (V. chamcedrys and officindlis), as a 

 substitute for tea, is by no means confined to them, 

 extending to Sweden, Germany, and other coun- 

 tries. 



The germander-speedwell is sometimes, though 

 erroneously, called eye-bright ; a name which, in 

 reality, apertains to the Euphrdsia, and poets, to 

 whom we must attribute the confusion, have also 

 called it " milkmaidVeye." Wordsworth falls into 

 this error, and Ebenezer Elliott, whose poems are 

 not sufficiently known to those who so mistakenly 

 shrink from him as a mere political, or even party, 

 rhymer, uses the same name in the following ex- 

 quisitively appreciative lines : 



