VOL. XI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS, 303 



Their gardens have all sorts of English pot-herbs, greens, and sallads. Also 

 roses and other flowers. There grow wild in the woods plantane of all sorts, 

 yellow-dock, bur-dock, Solomon's-seal, agrimony, centory, scabious, groundsel, 

 dwarf-elder, yarrow, purslane, and white maiden-hair, the best that ever I saw. 

 Upon the sides of the hills, asarum, and on the bayside, soldanella, or sea- 

 scurvy-grass in great plenty. 



Here grows the serpen taria nigra, the root of which was so much used in the last 

 great pestilence, that the price of it advanced from ten shillings to three pounds 

 sterling a pound; here is also a herb which some call dittany, others pepper- 

 wort ; it is not dittany of Candia, nor English dittander ; it grows a foot or a 

 foot and a half high ; the leaves are about the breadth of a groat, and figured 

 like a heart, and shot out of the stalk and branches one of a side directly oppo- 

 site to each other ; it smells hot like pepper, and bites on the tongue. The 

 water of this herb distilled out of an alembick, is one of the best things I know 

 to drive worms out of the body, and an ounce of this water taken causes per- 

 spiration plentifully. There are great numbers of other herbs, whose names, 

 nature, virtues, and operations, are altogether unknown to us in Europe, 

 neither have there been any physicians in those parts that have made it their 

 business to understand much of them ; but if the use of them were well known, 

 it might prove a great and beneficial addition to the materia medica. 



There are also divers kinds of small birds, of which the mocking-bird, the 

 red-bird, and humming-bird, are the most remarkable ; the first for variety and 

 sweetness of notes, the second for his colour, and the last for the small ness of 

 his body. As to the mocking-bird, besides his own natural notes, which are 

 many and pleasant, he imitates all the birds in the woods, from whence he takes 

 his name; he sings not only in the day but also at all hours in the night, on the 

 tops of the chimneys; he has strange motions in his flying, sometimes flutter- 

 ing in the air with his head right down and tail up, other times with his tail 

 down and head up. Being kept tame he is very docile. The red-bird takes his 

 name from his colour, being all over of a pure blood-red. The humming- 

 bird takes his name from the noise he makes in flying; this is of divers colours, 

 and not much larger than a hornet, and yet has all the parts of a bird entire. 



There are five or six sorts of snakes, amongst which the rattle-snake is 

 most remarkable, being about the size of a man's leg, and for the most part a 

 yard and a half long; he has a rattle at the end of his tail making a noise when 

 any one approaches him ; which seems to be a peculiar providence of God to 

 warn people to avoid the danger. 



The Indians are generally well proportioned as to their stature, being some- 

 what tall, but no ways corpulent; their hair black, usually hanging right down j 



