138 MAY 



tures, to ensure its prescription as a remedy for the 

 bite of a scorpion. Gerarde was far too good a man 

 of science to indorse the empirics, though he always 

 quotes their writings, and leaves his readers to form 

 their own opinion on the credibility of them. In 

 this instance he cites Dioscorides, ' that the leaues 

 of Scorpion grass applyed to the place, are a present 

 remedy against the stinging of Scorpions : and like- 

 wise boyled in wine and drunke, preuaile against 

 the said bitings, as also of addars, snakes, and such 

 venomous beasts.' Should any of my readers un- 

 luckily be bitten by a scorpion, and this remedy either 

 fail or not be at hand, he may fall back on that pre- 

 scribed by Jonston in his History of the Wonderful 

 Things in Nature, written a century later than 

 Gerarde's Herball, which is just as likely to prove 

 efficacious : namely ' if he (the person bitten) sit 

 upon an Asse with his face toward the tayl, the 

 Asse will endure the pain and not he.' 



Another old name for the scorpion grass, with its 

 ' floures of a light blew or watchet colour, with a 

 spot of yellow among the blew,' is mouse-ear, owing 

 to the shape of its leaves, a fancy perpetuated in the 

 scientific title Myosotis. But the present popular 

 name has not belonged to this pretty blue flower for 



