MANDRAGORA.| NATURAL HISTORY. 195 
proportion, a compound and counterfeit wine, which they 
sell for Candy wine, commonly called Malmsey. 
Gerard’s “Herbal,” bk. ii. ch. cccxxiii. 
I Love thee next to Malmsey in a morning. — 
Beaumont and Fletcher, “ The Captain,” iv. 2. 
Malt. 
Kine Lear, iii, 2, 82. 
Our Malt is made all the year long in some great 
towns, but in gentlemen’s and yeomen’s houses, who com- 
monly make sufficient for their own expenses only, the 
winter half is thought most meet for that commodity ; the 
Malt that is made when the willow doth bud, is commonly 
worst of all. The best Malt is tried by the hardness and 
colour, for if it look fresh with a yellow hue, and thereto 
will write like a piece of chalk, after you have bitten a 
kernel in sunder in the midst, then you may assure your- 
self that it is dried down—of all, the straw-dried is the 
most excellent. For the wood-dried Malt, when it is 
brewed, doth hurt and annoy the head of him that is not 
used thereto. Holinsked, “Description of England,” p. 169. 
Mandragora, Mandrake. 
Not poppy nor mandragora 
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world 
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep 
Which thou owedst yesterday, 
OTHELLO, ill. 3, 330. 
Kill, as doth the mandrake’s groan. 
ii, Kino Henry VI, iii, 2, 310. 
Mawnpracora beareth apples with great savour. The 
rind thereof meddled with wine is given to them to drink 
that shall be cut in the body, for they should sleep and 
not feel the sore cutting. And apples grow on the leaves, 
and be yellow and sweet of smell, but with a manner 
heaviness, and be fresh in savour. But yet Mandragora 
must be warily used, for it slayeth if men take much 
thereof. The juice thereof with woman’s milk laid to the 
temples maketh to sleep, yea though it were in the most 
hot ague. Mandragora hath many other virtues, and smiteth 
