•^ The viromatic Herbs $£ 



and winter savorys have always been largely used for 

 flavouring and we might do worse than revive the 

 Elizabethan custom of using it when dried and rubbed 

 to powder to add to grated bread-crumbs ' to breade their 

 meate, be it fish or flesh, to give it a quicker relish.' 



Few of the aromatic herbs are more loved than 

 southernwood {Artemisia abrotanum), with its pretty old 

 names, ' Lad's Love,' ' Old Man,' etc. It is a native 

 of the Mediterranean, and does not flower often in 

 Britain. It is generally supposed to have been introduced 

 into this country in the sixteenth century, but quite 

 possibly long before. It is mentioned in the earliest her- 

 bals (the Grete Herball 1526, etc.), and on the Continent 

 it had evidently been in common use for centuries. 

 Walafred Strabo, the German monk who lived in the 

 ninth century, mentions it amongst the healing herbs he 

 grew in his ' Little Garden,' and of it he says that its 

 ? hair-like leaves ' are good for fevers and wounds, and 

 that the plant has as many virtues as leaves. It was one 

 of the earliest shrubs imported by the settlers in the New 

 V\ orld, for it figures in the list of garden plants which the 

 first New England colonists tried to grow. The list is 

 pathetic reading, for many of the plants, such as rose- 

 mary, lavender and southernwood, survived the long sea 

 journey (it took 3 months in those days) but succumbed 

 to the rigours of the New England winter. The book in 

 which this list figures — New England's Rarities Discovered, 

 by John Josselyn Gent, 1672 — is of peculiar interest, for 

 it contains the first published lists of English garden 

 plants that would thrive in America, also of weeds such 

 as dandelion, plantain, etc., unknown before in that 

 country. Of southernwood the writer sadly observes : 



143 



