FOOL'S PARSLEY 237 



probably spring up whether we will or no, as it is 

 a plant essentially delighting in cultivated ground. 

 Personally we encourage it, as it is very graceful in 

 its growth ; but it must be borne in mind that it is 

 one of our poisonous species. Even if we do not 

 hang the dog with a bad name, it is at least well to 

 keep him under observation. The fool's parsley is 

 so called, with that simple directness which charac- 

 terises so many of the old plant-names, from a 

 belief that no one but a person to whom the dis- 

 paraging epithet would fully apply could be so 

 wanting in sense as to mistake it for the true 

 parsley. The resemblance between the real and the 

 counterfeit is, however, closer than in many plants 

 that bear names suggesting resemblance, while the 

 fact that the aethusa is particularly prone to spring- 

 ing up in cultivated land, possibly in close proximity 

 to one's patch of parsley, makes it evidently a more 

 dangerous plant than one which, however similar it 

 might be to some culinary herb, was never found 

 except in woods or wild moorlands. 



The fruit and flowers of the fool's parsley are 

 borne in little clusters, while the stems that bear 

 these little bunches are themselves in like manner 

 united in one point, like the ribs of an open and 

 inverted umbrella. Where the secondary clusters 

 of stems are given off three sharp and narrow leaf- 

 like forms are seen pendent, and this marked 

 feature not only distinguishes at once the plant 



