114 THE OLD ENGLISH HERBALS 



double daisy which differs from the first described only in the 

 floure which at the sides thereof puts forth many foot-stalkes 

 carrying also little double floures, being commonly of a red 

 colour; so that each stalke carries as it were an old one and 

 the brood thereof : whence they have fitly termed it the childing 

 Daisie." Of silverweed he tells us : " the later herbalists doe 

 call it argentine of the silver drops that are to be seen in the 

 distilled water thereof, when it is put into a glasse, which you 

 shall easily see rowling and tumbling up and downe in the 

 bottome." Delphinium, we learn, derives its name from 

 dolphin, " for the floures especially before they be perfected 

 have a certain shew and likeness of those Dolphines which old 

 pictures and armes of certain antient families have expressed 

 with a crooked and bending figure or shape, by which signe also 

 the heavenly Dolphin is set forth." Rest-harrow, he says, is so 

 called " because it maketh the Oxen whilest they be in plowing 

 to rest or stand still." One of the most attractive names which 

 he accounts for is cloudberry. " Cloudberrie groweth naturally 

 upon the tops of two high mountaines (among the mossie places), 

 one in Yorkshire, called Ingleborough, the other in Lancashire 

 called Pendle, two of the highest mountains in all England, 

 where the clouds are lower than the tops of the same all winter 

 long, whereupon the country people have called them cloud- 

 berries; found there by a curious gentleman in the knowledge 

 of plants, called Mr. Hesketh, often remembered." 



For those who care to seek it Gerard supplies an unequalled 

 picture of the wild-flower life in London in Elizabethan days. 

 It is pleasant to think of the little wild bugloss growing " in the 

 drie ditch bankes about Piccadilla " (Piccadilly), of mullein 

 " in the highwaies about Highgate " ; of clary " in the fields of 

 Holborne neere unto Grays Inn " ; of lilies of the valley, the 

 rare white-flowered betony, devil's-bit, saw-wort, whortle- 

 berries, dwarf willows and numerous other wild plants on 

 Hampstead Heath; of the yellow-flowered figwort "in the 

 moist medowes as you go from London to Hornsey "; of the 



