THE ERTSIMTTM, 287 



to be cured of a loss of voice. Boileau replies that he has 

 heard the best accounts of the erysimum, and that he means 

 to make use of it the following summer. 



It is a plant of slender pretensions in a garden, and which, 

 S» regards a cough, cures it, as any herb would, of which 

 we should persist in drinking an infusion till the cough went 

 away of itself. 



For a long time, virtues and miracles were attributed to 

 plants, which have been exploded for centuries, virtues 

 founded upon analogies, resemblances, and want of resem- 

 blances. 



The scabious was in great repute for complaints of the 

 eyes, because the scabious is in shape somewhat like the eyes; 

 one plant was good for the liver, and another for the heart, on 

 account of the shape of their foliage. 



Then again, some tiger-spotted plants have been used, solely 

 on that account, against the venom of serpents. 



Other plants have received names borrowed from the 

 writings of the ancients, and with their names have been 

 transmitted to them the virtues, most frequently fictitious, 

 which the ancients attributed to the plant pointed out by 

 them. But if these virtues had been real, as the plant of the 

 moderns, though bearing the same name, is frequently a very 

 different plant, it could not participate in any respect with 

 the miracles proclaimed. 



Among the virtues attributed to plants, we must not forget 

 that of destroying enchantments, and overpowering the efforts 

 and conjurations of sorcerers. 



The service-tree, that fine tree whose umbels of white 

 blossoms are succeeded by bunches of fruit, first green, then 

 yeUow, then orange, and then bright scarlet, still enjoys in 

 Scotland a great reputation of this kind. Every year, 

 shepherds make their sheep pass, one by one, through a ring 

 made of the branches of the service-tree. God in the 

 beginning, when creating the service-tree, never designed it to 

 be subservient to such impious follies; He only meant to 

 make a very beautiful tree, covered with very beautiful fruit, 

 which should present in the winter to those other charming 

 objects of His creating, the blackbirds and the thrushes, a 

 sumptuous and an abundant feast. 



