Botany of the Borders. 403 
tager’s black tea-pot is devoted to the preparation of fragrant 
stomachic drinks from the chamomile and hyssop, which once 
flourished in every garden: Even the village cow-doctor’s 
skill in bleeding and the use of decoctions of our native 
herbs are at a discount, for within the last thirty years edu- 
cated veterinarians have settled in most of the border dis- 
tricts. 
After the Reformation, the education of the people was a 
burden imposed upon the land in Scotland; in England, it 
was left to charity, and to private enterprise, both of which 
have proved miserably deficient. It does not appear in these 
pages on which side of the border popular beliefs of all sorts 
lingered longest and in the greatest strength ; be that as it 
may, we have a pleasing insight into the life of the young 
borderer in the doings of a young family as they wander 
forth in May to gather wild flowers to ornament the haw- 
thorn spray, and make necklaces of the pretty daisy, and 
chains of the dandelion stalks; and again, in summer, we 
have the rompings of the elder boys on their broomsticks, 
the platting of rush-caps, and helmets, the stout assault with 
the sword-like leaves of the yellow Iris; the single combat 
with the heads of the Ribwort plantain ; the hunting after the 
even-leaved clover with its fairy-land associations, the find- 
ing of which was certain to insure good luck; whereat our 
author remarks, “ Beliefs of this kind will continue to in- 
fluence posterity, for they ae permanently rooted in that 
stage of life which corresponds, in its credulity and faith, 
with that age of society in which beliefs originated; then 
we have the foray to gather hazles, the anxiety to get a ‘ nine- 
some bobbin;” the sour sloe-plum sweetened by the win- 
ter’s frost; the earth-nut, which if its white stem be broken, 
will sink deeper into the earth. The young suckers, or 
offshoots of the wild rose, termed Chapman’s cheese, are all 
set down in the list of the school-boy’s delicacies; and, strange 
to tell, in eating haws, the number of lies that a boy has told 
that day is reckoned by the number of black specks on the 
teeth, and the absence of specks vindicates his innocence! ! 
The practice of blowing upon the ripened heads of the dan- 
delion is very common, but the number of revolutions made 
‘ 2c2 
