12 
NATURE NOTES 
indicate its power, for the smoke of the burning weed was said 
to exorcise evil spirits.* 
“ Ellebor.” — The hellebore is one of our February flowers, 
keeping company with the daisy and chickweed. Its dried 
leaves were used in medicine. It has, too, a very sinister 
reputation. 
“ Catapuce ” is said to be the broad-leaved or caper spurge 
(Euphorbia Lathy vis), with a very bitter caustic principle. Like all 
the spurge family, it is full of a milky, acrid juice. 
Gaten or gaitre berries are the berries of the dogwood 
(Cornus sanguinea). They abound in a very wholesome oil, and 
the bark of the tree is very astringent. 
Among other herbs Chaucer also mentions the “ herb ive,” 
the “ plaintain,” the “ wall pellitory,” “ egremain,” or agrimony, 
the valerian under its old name of setewall or setwall, generally 
united with the licoris. Thus the Clerk of Oxenforde ; 
“ He himself was swete as is the root 
Of licoris or any setewale.” 
And again : 
“ There springen herbes, grete and smale. 
The licoris and the setewale. ”+ 
Culpepper tells us that “ the root of valerian boiled with licoris, 
raisins and annis seed is singular good for those that are short- 
winded and for those that are troubled with the cough.” I 
should think these ingredients would equally well recommend 
themselves to our modern mind. “ Licoris” is the old English 
form of the French liquiritia corrupted from the Latin glycyr- 
rhiza, the liquorice plant, which is not indigenous. “The root 
is long and slender, of a fine yellow colour inside, and full of 
juice sweeter than sugar. It grows wild in France, Italy, Spain 
and Germany.” 
“ Lunarie ” is the moonwort, Botrychiam Imiaria. Then the 
plant was used in incantations, and it was also considered effica- 
cacious as a cure for madness. 
In the “ Knighte’s Tale ” Palamon escaped from his prison by 
drugging his gaoler with narcotics and “ opye.” The use of 
opium must have been known to the apothecaries for Chaucer 
to mention it, but he does not say anything about the poppy. 
*[ Coles, in his “Adam in Eden” (1657), says that fumitory was so named 
“ because being of a whitish blew colour, as smoak is, it appeareth to those that 
behold it at a distance as if the ground were all of a smoak.” Dr. Prior, how- 
ever, says that the old authors generally derive the name “ from the belief that 
it was produced without seed from vapours rising from the earth.” It has also 
been pointed out (Britten and Holland, Dictionaty of English Plant Names') that 
its root, when freshly pulled up, gives off a strong smell remarkably like the luines 
of nitric acid. — En. N.N.) 
t [No doubt, in the i6th century setwall was the name applied to Valeriana 
pyrenaica ; but perhaps earlier it was applied to the rhizome of the turmeric, Cicr- 
euma longa, known to the apothecaries as zedoaria. Parkinson gives a figure of 
this “outlandish root ” in his “ Theatrum,” p. 1612, and it is suggested by ^lessrs. 
Britten and Holland that “ setwall” is a corruption of “zedoaria.” — E d. N.N.) 
