CHAUCER'S STUDY OF NATURE ii 
laymen in his day.* Alexander Neckam, who was the author 
of a Latin poem, “ De Naturis rerum,” gives a long list of herbs, 
trees and flowers for the garden, but the greater part of his life 
was devoted to study, more especially of nature. Chaucer was a 
civilian, so if his list seems limited, we must not blame him. 
He was a busy public man, to whom also the passing stream of 
his fellow creatures was always interesting. 
The daisy is, of course, the chief flower. Chaucer loved it 
above all other flowers in the mead. How he could have passed 
over even without a mere mention flowers like the primrose, 
violet and daffodil, seems very curious to the modern mind. 
But his attention may have been drawn to the daisy by its 
frequency as a subject of the verse of the Trouveres and its 
employment in the service of chivalry. The praises of Mar- 
guerite de Valois furnished the theme for many poems. The 
daisy flower was held to be her prototype ; it was the emblem of 
fidelity in love and the badge of the province of Languedoc. 
We know Chaucer’s early efforts followed the French taste, and 
his translation of the “ Romaunt de la Rose ” may have opened up 
to him many French ideas. Dante used the daisy in a different 
way. With him it was a spiritualised flower, a type of the souls 
of the blessed, rather than our simple bairnwort,f the daisy of 
childhood and innocence. Chaucer may have originally drawn 
the object of his love from abroad, but his treatment of his theme 
is more English than foreign. 
In the “ Nonnes Preestes Tale ” Chaucer gives us certain herbs 
used by the apothecary of his day. There was the “ laureole ” 
or “ laurer,” meaning the bay tree, that gives “so passing a 
delicious smell.” A fragrant oil and a perfumed water were 
obtained by distillation from the berries of Lauriis nobilis, and at 
a later date from the leaves of Pntnus lauyocerastis. But the 
apothecary combined the two characters of the tree — the laurels 
resist “ witchcraft very potently, as also all the evils old Saturn 
can do the body of man. The berries are very effectual against 
all poisons of venomous creatures, as also against the pestilence 
and other infectious diseases.” 
The centaurie is probably our dainty little Evythroca cmtau- 
rium, a plant fabled to have sprung from one of the Centaurs, 
who taught mankind the use of plants and medicinal herbs. Its 
leaves have a very bitter taste : “ ’Tis very wholesome, but not 
very toothsome.” 
“ Fumitere ” [Fumaria officinalis), though a tonic, does not 
hold so high a place in medicine as in witchcraft. It is a “rank” 
plant, and where it flourishes abundantly betokens idleness and 
neglect on the part of the husbandman. Its name is said to 
* 1157-1217, a professoral the University of Paris. Became an Auguslinian 
monk at Cirencester. 
t [“ Bairnwort ” is probably a corruption of “ ban wort,” i.e., bonewort, 
because, as Turner says, “it helpeth bones to knyt agayne.” — Kd. JV-N.] 
