362 WILD FLO WEES. 



garden favourites. Neither the British nor the 

 African species appear to lay much claim to econo- 

 mic usefulness ; and even in Withering's " Arrange- 

 ment of British Plants"* that rich repository 

 of the household, or industrial uses of our native- 

 plants we only find that the family generally 

 " attract a variety of flies " though one, the (G. 

 Rcibertianum, is recorded as a " vulnerary and ab- 

 stergent/' Such is the judgment too often passed, 

 without further examination, on many things simply 

 because they are beautiful ; and certain it is that 

 if uses be not sought, they will not be found. Very 

 differently did the ancients view the tribe, which, 

 in spite of their attractive charms for the flies, they 

 employed as (what the old translator of Pliny terms) 

 " a singular medicine for the phthysick ;" adding, 

 that " it is a rare hearbe/'"f > being a restorative for 

 those " weakened and decaied in nature by long 

 sicknesse ;" while the juice of the root was con- 

 sidered a panacea for all complaints of the ears ; 

 and the seeds, mixed with pepper and myrrh, were 

 administered in cases of spinal, or other, cramp. 

 Indeed, in our own days, the crane's bills are suc- 

 cessfully given in nervous complaints, and in the 

 form of an infusion, to check haemorrhages not, 

 however, on the doctrine of signatures, by which, as 

 Sir John Hill informs us, this power is declared be- 

 cause the dying leaves assume so beautiful a sanguine 



* Seventh edition. 



f Hollande's " Pliny." The words singular and rare in the 

 above passages are, of course, not to be read as we now use 

 them, but as applying to the great value of the plant. 



