2 THE BOOK OF HERBS 



interesting history in folk-lore, magic and medicine. 

 Herbs have been used in all countries and from the 

 earliest times, but I have confined myself, as a rule, 

 to those spoken of by British authors, and used in 

 the British Isles, though not scrupling to quote foreign 

 beliefs or customs where they give weight or complete- 

 ness to our own or our forefathers' practices, or are 

 themselves of much interest. We have forgotten much 

 that would be profitable to us. 



Mr Dillon, writing in the Nineteenth Century, April, 

 1894, on " A Neglected Sense" — the sense of smell — 

 describes a Japanese game, the object of which was that 

 while one of the players burned certain kinds of incense 

 or fragrant woods, singly or in combination, the others 

 ventured opinions from the odours arising, and recorded 

 their conjectures by means of specially marked counters 

 on a board. The delicate equipment for it included a 

 silver, open - worked brazier ; a spatula, on which 

 the incense was taken up, also of silver, sometimes 

 delicately inlaid with enamel ; and silver-framed mica 

 plates (about one inch square), on which the incense 

 had been heated, were set to cool on " a number of 

 medallions, mother-of-pearl, each in the shape of a 

 chrysanthemum flower or of a maple leaf." 



Both Mr Dillon and Miss Lambert (^Nineteenth Century, 

 May 1880) attribute the importance early attached to 

 odours to religious reasons. He says that it was be- 

 lieved that the gods, being spirits, neither required nor 

 desired solid offerings, but that the ethereal nature of 

 the ascending fragrance was gratifying and sustaining to 

 them. Miss Lambert quotes an account of the tribes of 

 Florida " setting on the tops of the trees, as offerings 

 to the sun, skins of deer filled with the best fruits of 

 the country, crowned with flowers and sweet herbs. 

 Among the Aztecs of Mexico the festival of the goddess 

 of flowers, Coatlicue, was kept by Xochenanqui, or 



