96 



regular practice does not allow that it possesses any 

 medicinal efficacy, and its fanciful peculiarities are 

 in no repute ; yet it seems to hanker after its lost 

 fame, and lingers around the dwellings of man, for 

 though not solely found about our habitations, as 

 Miller thought, yet generally, when perceived, it is 

 near some inhabited or ruined residence, not as a 

 stray from cultivation^ but from preference. Our 

 village doctresses, an almost extinct race of useful, 

 valuable women, the consolers, the comforters, and 

 often mitigators of the ailments of the poor, still 

 make use of vervain tea as a strengthener, and the 

 dried powder of its leaves as a vermifuge; but 

 probably in another generation all the venerated 

 virtues of the vervain will be consigned to oblivion. 

 This plant seems to be the native growth of many 

 districts in Europe, Asia, and Africa. 



The dyers' weed, yellow weed, weld, or wold 

 (reseda luteola)^ thrives in all our abandoned stone 

 quarries, upon the rejected rubbish of the lime- 

 kilns, and waste places of the roads, apparently a 

 perfectly indigenous plant. Unmindful of frost, or 

 of drought, it preserves a degree of verdure, when 

 nearly all other vegetation is seared up by these 

 extremes in exposed situations. It was, and is yet, 

 I believe, cultivated in England for the use of the 

 dyer. We import it, however, into Bristol from 

 France, and it sells in that city for ten shillings 

 per cwt. in a dry state. It gives a fine, permanent, 

 yellow colour to cottons, silks, and woollens^ in a 

 variety of shades, by the aid of alum, &c. A blue 



