5230 Notes of a Tour in Switzerland. 



Grirasel on the 27th of August, and the former plant scarcely in per- 

 fection on the Wengern Alp on the 23rd. 



Arnica montana, a bold, handsome plant of its family, which for its 

 excellent medicinal properties obtained, among the old practitioners, 

 the title of " Panacea lapsorum," occurred in various places, as on the 

 Rigi, the Grimsel pass, the Wengern Alp, &c. Printed handbills 

 advertising the medicine (which is in truth not only a popular, but a 

 very efficacious remedy in the case of hurts and bruises) lay about in 

 conspicuous places in the hotel at Chamouni for the information of 

 visitors. The tincture, I am informed, is prepared from the leaves, 

 and therefore need not involve the destruction of the plant ; had it 

 done so, the species, I think, must soon have been exterminated from 

 the mountains; for, though it grew, as I have said, in very many 

 places, it did not appear to be very abundant in any ; and I am not 

 aware that the plant is ever cultivated for the sake of its medicinal 

 uses. 



Switzerland seems to be a country peculiarly favourable to the 

 fruiting of its native berry -bearing shrubs. The scarlet elder {Sam- 

 bucus racemosa), e. g., which, under the influence of an English cli- 

 mate, I believe, not seldom fails to mature its fruit, makes, in many 

 of the Swiss valleys, a most showy and beautiful appearance, with its 

 bright scarlet berries hanging in numerous bunches. For what use- 

 ful purpose the berries are employed I was unable to learn, but ob- 

 served that they are gathered and collected for some use, and that not 

 as an article of food. On the Tcte Noire, Vaccinium Vitis-Idaea pro- 

 duced unusually large clusters of berries, and these in such abundance 

 that it would have been easy to have gathered an ample supply for 

 culinary purposes in a very short space of time, and without moving 

 many yards from one spot. And it is no bad tart, I may observe, that 

 may be made of these berries, much inferior as they are to those of 

 the cranberry (Oxycoccos paluslris), for which they are sometimes put 

 off and sold to such as know not how to distinguish them from the 

 genuine fruit. 



Again, to take another instance, Hippophae Rhamnoides in several 

 places I observed to be almost smothered with its own fruit, the twigs 

 and branches of the shrub being entirely enveloped, for the length of 

 six or more inches, within a closely compacted mass of lurid orange- 

 coloured berries, of a rather forbidding aspect, somehow involuntarily 

 reminding one of physic. Whatever their actual properties may be, 

 they look cathartic, if not downright poisonous. Linnaeus, however, 

 in his f Flora Lapponica' and 'Flora Suecica,' describes the berries 



