Ferula 



veyed fire from heaven, and the pith of it is still 

 used as tinder. Like the lily, it is in flower from 

 May to July. It grows well in our gardens, though 

 the earliest leaves are apt to be damaged by frost, 

 and it becomes a little ragged before the summer 

 is gone. 



Pan's garland in our passage is one which a man 

 of little courage would hardly wear, but a god had 

 the appropriate stature. Images of Silvanus repre- 

 sent as large a chaplet. 



In a dried state the stem was the school cane, 

 the mildest instrument of corporal punishment, the 

 climax being ferula, scutica, flagellum. It was also 

 an old man's walking-stick, and, if it was so used in 

 Greece, perhaps ought to supplant the clouded cane 

 in the Westminster Play. 



Flower, April to June. 

 Italian name, Ferula. 



Filix. 



• filicem curvis invisam . . . aratris ' (Gc. ii. 189). 



The bracken (Pteris aquilina) was as common in 

 Italy as it is with us. The stout rhizomes go very 

 deep and increase very fast. Though a modern 

 plough would make little of them, they could 

 doubtless be an obstacle to that which Virgil de- 

 scribes, and which is still used in the backward 

 districts of southern Italy. 



Bracken was useful as litter for sheep (Ge. iii. 297) 

 and probably also for cattle, as it still is in Sussex 



47 



