ALEXANDERS 247 



passed out of use, other things more palatable 

 having been introduced. The young shoots were 

 eaten raw, celery fashion, 1 or were cooked as we 

 now serve sea-kale, or became a flavouring ingre- 

 dient in soups and stews. In Tusser's " Fiue 

 Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie" we find it 

 amongst "the herbes and rootes for sallets and 

 sauce " that the good housewife will be careful to 

 rear in her garden plot, in company with " cresies, 

 lettice, endiue, spinage," and other useful herbs. 

 Parkinson, writing in 1629, before the plant had 

 passed out of use, declares that " our Alexanders 

 are much used to make broth with the upper part of 

 the roote, which is the tenderest part, and the leaves 

 being boiled together. Some eate them either raw 

 with some vinegar, or stew them and so eat them, and 

 this chiefly in the time of Lent, to helpe to digest 

 the viscous humours that are gathered by the much 

 use of fish at that time." A further great recom- 

 mendation of the plant to our ancestors, who seem 

 to have been always in a mortal fear of meeting 

 toads, shrew mice, serpents, dragons, and such-like 

 perils of the country, is that " the seedes if they be 

 boyled in wine, or taken in wine, are effectuall 

 against the bitings of serpents." 



The goutweed Plate XXXIV. another umbel- 

 liferous plant, is one that, graceful as its verdant 



1 The plant was earthed up, as celery is blanched for the 

 market. 



