.VOL. XIX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. I37 



marshes of Lincolnshire, very fair, and not to be distinguished by the eye from 

 that in our gardens, but is intolerably bitter ; which garden culture alone has 

 made pleasant to the taste. 



For this purpose, the liming of pasture ground is not so much to fertilize 

 and make the grass grow ranker, but also to make it palatable to cattle, to 

 make it eat short and tender, and sweet, which it does by a kind of blanching 

 it. Throw lime over the half of a pasture, and the cattle will not bite any 

 where else willingly, but will eat here to the bare ground, neglecting the 

 other half. 



I used to lime my asparagus and lettuce beds ; and this so far meliorated 

 them, that they far exceeded in tenderness and pleasant taste ; covering the 

 asparagus in winter with clean wheat straw, instead of nasty litter, and sowing 

 the bed thick with the powder of burnt oyster-shells. 



On the long Worm,* which is troublesome to the Inhabitants of the East Indies. 

 In a Letter from thence to Dr. Martin Lister. N° 225, p. 41 7. 



These worms are bred in the water, between Gomroon and Schiraz, espe- 

 cially that about Laur. They come out in any part of the body, and are very 

 troublesome and dangerous ; some losing their legs, sometimes their lives by 

 them ; they come out sometimes to the length of 6 or 7 yards ; when they 

 first come out they are small like a thread, and afterwards grow larger and 

 stronger by degrees. They roll them up on a little bit of stick or cotton, and 

 lay upon them onions and flour of rice boiled in milk. The chief care is to 

 be taken not to break them, for then it is that they do mischief. When 

 mine first came out, for about 40 or 50 days it came out every day by little and 

 little, without putting me to much pain, but that I could go up and down till 

 it was come out a yard and a quarter ; but afterwards, one day stirring too 

 much, I hurt the worm and enraged him, so that he broke off of himself, 

 and going in, caused my foot and leg, up to the calf, to swell till the skin was 

 ready to burst, which kept me sleepless, and threw me into a fever. I had a 

 surgeon, and kept my bed for about 20 days, having several fits of the fever. 

 The worm was broke to pieces, and came out in several parts of my foot ; but 

 the surgeon applied such things as killed the worm, and turned it to matter : 

 he then lanced my leg a little above the ankle, and another place in my foot, 

 and so with drawing plaisters drew it all out. 



* Gordius Medinensis, I, inn. The affection itself is the vena niedinensis of medical writers. 

 VOL. IV. T 



