166 THE OLD ENGLISH HERBALS 



this : " For if the sun draw away the virtues of the herb it must 

 needs do the like by hay, which the experience of every farmer 

 will explode for a notable piece of nonsense." He also pours 

 scorn on those who say that the sap does not rise in the winter. 

 Here his argument is even more remarkable, and yet one cannot 

 help realising how effectual it would be with the class of folk 

 with whom he dealt. " If the sap fall into the roots in the fall 

 of the leaf and lies there all the winter then must the root grow 

 all the winter, but the root grows not at all in the winter as 

 experience teaches, but only in the summer. If you set an apple 

 kernel in the spring you shall find the root to grow to a pretty 

 bigness in the summer and be not a whit bigger next spring. 

 What doth the sap do in the root all the winter that while? 

 Pick straws? Tis as rotten as a rotten post." He gives as 

 his own version of what happens to the sap that " when the 

 sun declines from the tropic of cancer, the sap begins to congeal 

 both in root and branch. When he touches the tropic of capri- 

 corn and ascends to uswards it begins to wax thin again." 

 One cannot help suspecting that Culpeper knew perfectly 

 well what nonsense he was talking, but that he also realised how 

 remunerative such nonsense was and how much his customers 

 were impressed by it. In his dissertation on wormwood one 



and may gather them when they are in their full strength, which is when the 

 Planet is especially strong, and then in his own Hour gather your Herb; 

 therefore that you may know what hour belongs to every Planet take notice 

 that Astrologers do assign the seven days of the week to the seven planets, 

 as to the Sun or O Sunday ; to the Moon or > Monday ; to Mars or <$ Tuesday ; to 

 Mercury or Wednesday ; to Jupiter or it Thursday ; to Venus or $ Friday ; 

 to Saturn or T? Saturday. And know that every Planet governs the first 

 Hour after Sun Rise upon his day and the next Planet to him takes the next 

 Hour successively in this order, I?, T, c?, O,$, $, > I? 1. So be it any 

 day every Seventh Hour comes to each Planet successively, as if the day be 

 Thursday then the first hour after Sun Rising is Jupiter's, the next <?, the next 

 O , next $. So on till it come to 1L again. And if you gather Herbs in their 

 Planetary Hour you may expect to do Wonders, otherwise not ; to Astrologers 

 I need say nothing; to others this is as much as can easily be learnt."' The 

 Compendious Herbal, by John Archer, One of his Majesties Physicians in 

 Ordinary. 



