128 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
taken inwardly, for all the diseases of the mouth and 
eyes, as well as for the quinsy. The roots, boiled in 
wine, were used by the Romans for all infirmities of the 
mouth, for which astringents were necessary; and the 
young shoots were eaten as a salad to fasten loose teeth. 
This was not a mere fancy of the old doctors, for all the 
rubus tribe are eminently astringent; and Withering 
assigns the same use to the raspberry as the ancients 
did to the bramble. He says, “ the fruit is extremely 
grateful as nature presents it; but made into a sweet¬ 
meat, with sugar, or fermented with wine, the flavour is 
improved. It is fragrant, sub-acid, and cooling. It 
dissolves the tartarous concretions of the teeth, and for 
this purpose it is superior to the strawberry/^ I 
imagine it is the astringency of the leaves of the bramble 
that renders it such a favourite food of goats. On a 
bank where there is a thorough good mixture of brush¬ 
wood and wild stuff, goats will invariably crop first the 
brambles, and next the shoots that crowd about the roots 
of elms. Withering says of the raspberry, “ the fresh 
leaves are the favourite food of kidsand Yirgii—keen 
rustic as he was—had observed the same thing, for he 
says— 
“ On shrubs they browse, and on the bleaky top 
Of rugged hills the thorny brambles crop.”f 
Another note from classic sources is worth making 
here. Pliny says the propagation of trees by layers, 
was taught the ancients by the bramble bush, which fre- 
* British Plants, Ed. 1801, Yol. iii., p. 459. 
f Dryden’s Virgil, Georgies iii. p. 489. 
