FETID HELLEBORE. 68 



By a very wise appointment, peculiar propensi- 

 ties have been bestowed upon the vegetable world, 

 greatly assimilating to the tastes and inclinations of 

 the animated tribes. Beasts and insects feed on 

 particular plants, and reject others, and the delight 

 of one is disgusting to another. So some plants, 

 not having the power of locomotion, will thrive 

 only in certain compounded soils, aspects, and 

 situations, evincing a similar tendency to preference 

 of nourishment as do the sensitive tribes ; and some 

 districts, that vary a little in their component parts 

 or position from those adjoining, will present an 

 individual or a race that is not found in another : 

 the common product of the North or of the East is 

 treasured in the Herbarium of the southern or 

 western botanist ; we can boast but few, yet we 

 have some of these capricious children of the soil. 



The fetid hellebore (helleborus fxtidus) is not a 

 common plant with us, but we find it sparingly in 

 one or two places ; and though a plant indigenous 

 to Britain, yet it is not improbable that it has 

 strayed from cultivation, and become naturalized 

 in many of the places in which we now find it. Its 

 uses as a herb of celebrity for some complaints of 

 cattle occasioned its being fostered in many a cot- 

 tage-garden long since erased, where the good wife 

 was the simple doctress of the village, when perhaps 

 mortality was not more extensive than in these days 

 of greater pretension and display. Modern prac- 

 tice yet retains preparations of this herb, but it ap- 

 pears that, from the powerful manner in which they 



