MAY 117 



to starving people. The Rabbins, he says, explained 

 that it was not the droppings of pigeons that sold at 

 this exorbitant rate, but the corn which the birds 

 brought back in their crops from the country; but it 

 does not seem to have struck these commentators that 

 the birds themselves would have been more valuable 

 as food than the grain in their crops. The probable 

 explanation is that the reference is to the roots of 

 the Ornithogalum (ornithogale of Pliny) either the 

 star-of-Bethlehem (0. umbellatum) or the Arabian 

 ornithogalum (0. arabicum), both of which sheet the 

 plains with white blossoms in spring, suggesting the 

 homely similitude of the droppings of birds. No 

 doubt, half a pint of the nutritious bulbs of this plant 

 would be well worth the price quoted, under the stress 

 of famine. 



Herbalists, in preparing simples, have made them- 

 selves responsible for as many flower-names as lovers 

 have done in preparing posies. Eyebright, feverfew, 

 fleabane, are thoroughly good names, and so is tutsan, 

 that is, tout-sain, the countryman's name for St. John's 

 wort ; for, as good Gerarde saith, ' the leves, floures, and 

 seeds stamped and put in a glasse with oile olive, and 

 set in the sunne for certain weekes, doth make an oile 

 of the colour of blood, which is a most pretious remedy 

 for deep wounds, and those that are thorow the body.' 

 All-heal, or wound -wort, however, is another plant 

 Stachys palustris useful for staunching bleeding. 



But the doctrine of signatures, whereby the fancied 

 resemblance of parts of plants to organs of the human 



