NATURE AND BOOKS. 27 
I remember taking sly glances when I was a very 
little boy at an old Culpepper’s Herbal, heavily bound in 
leather and curiously illustrated. It was so deliciously 
wicked to read about the poisons ; and I thought per- 
haps it was a book like that, only in papyrus rolls, that 
was used by the sorceress who got.ready the poisoned 
mushrooms in old Rome. Youth’s ideas are so imagi- 
native, and bring together things that are so widely 
separated. Conscience told me I had no business to 
read about poisons; but there was a fearful fascination 
in hemlock, and I recollect tasting a little bit—it was 
very nasty. At this day, nevertheless, if any one wishes 
to begin a pleasant, interesting, unscientific acquaintance 
with English plants, he would do very well indeed to get 
a good copy of Culpepper. Grey hairs had insisted in 
showing themselves in my beard when, all those weary 
years afterwards, I thought I would like to buy the still 
older Englishman, Gerard, who had no Linnzus to 
guide him, who walked about our English lanes centuries 
ago. What wonderful scenes he‘must have viewed when 
they were all a tangle of wild flowers, and plants that 
are now scarce were common, and the old ploughs, and 
the curious customs, and the wild red-deer—it would 
make a good picture, it really would, Gerard studying 
English orchids! Such a volume !—hundreds of pages, 
yellow of course, close type, and marvellously well 
printed. The minute care they must have taken in 
those early days of printing to get up such a book—a 
wonderful voiume both in bodily shape and contents. 
Just then the only copy I could hear of was much 
damaged. The cunning old bookseller said he could 
make it up; but I have no fancy for patched books, they 
are not genuine; I would rather have them deficient ; 
and the price was rather long, and so I went Gerardless. 
