THE ELDER. 



269 



As soon as the flower-buds come on, they serve 

 to make a pickle of very good flavour ; the flowers 

 at their opening, infused, communicate their taste 

 and smell to vinegar, — infused and let to stand 

 in best Florence oil, excellent to be laid over 

 bruises, and external swellings ; and taken inter- 

 nally, very healing and cooling; the flowers in 

 their natural state, are very sudorific, and assuage 

 pains ; distilled with simple water, make a sweet 

 cooling wash for the face in summer, which takes 

 off* inflammations of the eyes (as a coUyrium), is 

 good for the wind in children, and a very inno- 

 cent vehicle in fevers ; distilled in spirits, it as- 

 suages cholical pains in adult persons ; and there 

 is a spirit to be drawn from the Elder, which the 

 late Duke of Somerset, who married the heiress 

 of Piercy, took for the gout, as I am informed, 

 with success. When the berries are ripe, they 

 make a very wholesome syrup in colds and fevers ; 

 and some make wines of them, by mixing Rhenish 

 or other white wines. Of the younger sappy 

 branches the bark, pared off* close to the wood, 

 makes a salve efficacious beyond most others for 

 scalds. This inner bark is also very salutary in 

 dropsies, says Mr. Ray. The wood is close- 

 grained, sweet, and cleanly, and beyond any 

 other chosen by butchers for skewers, as least 

 affecting their flesh ; it is very beautiful also 

 for turners'-ware, and fineering, and for toys of as 

 neat a polish as box: and the very pith of this 

 useful shrub is proper to cool, and make ulcers 

 and wounds digest. More uses than these may 

 occur by way of medicine, but the above are 

 perhaps more than suflacient to shew that the 

 Cornu-Britons did not denominate places and 



