254 OUR ROCK-GARDEN 



grinder and the doctor collected his own herbs, but 

 in these latter days the painter looks to others 

 and gets wonderful chemical pigments much more 

 brilliant, and some of them at least much less 

 permanent than those used by the artists of old, 

 while the doctor, far too busy to leave his round of 

 patients for a day's botanising, trusts to others to 

 collect the necessary raw material of the materia 

 medica, the result having been known to have 

 sometimes been a very considerable adulteration by 

 the admixture with the foxglove leaves of those of 

 the mullein and comfrey, equally common plants. 

 While, however, these latter fill the collector's bag 

 as rapidly as those of the foxglove we need scarcely 

 declare that this is almost as reprehensible a proceed- 

 ing as any going, since it is most important that 

 all drugs should have a recognised and standard 

 strength, and an infusion made from these spurious 

 leaves intermixed with those of the true plant would 

 necessarily be much less powerful and reliable. 

 This would lead to an increase in the dose, when 

 the medical man found that the first administration 

 was producing no effect, and if this next prepara- 

 tion were produced from an unadulterated sample 

 the infusion would be much more potent than it 

 was at all supposed to be. 



As the aim of our readers will rather be the 

 growing of these plants for their beauty than for 

 their medicinal virtues, the relative strengths of 



