PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
iS5 
scent of its flowers; but the large secretions of honey-dew 
which load the leaves, and the fact that it comes late into leaf 
and sheds its leaves very early, have rather thrown it out of 
favour of late years. As a useful tree it does not rank very 
high, except for wood-carvers, who highly prize its light, easily- 
cut wood, that keeps its shape, and is very little liable to crack 
or split either in the working or afterwards. Nearly all Grinling 
Gibbons’ delicate carving is in Lime wood. To gardeners the 
Lime is further useful as furnishing the material for bast or 
bazen mats, 1 which are made from its bark, and interesting 
as being the origin of the name of Linnaeus. 
Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, 
Ling, Heath, brown Furze, anything. — Tempest, i. i, 70. 
If this be the correct reading (and not Long Heath) the 
reference is to the Heather or Common Ling (Calluna vul¬ 
garis). This is the plant that is generally called Ling in the 
South of England, but in the North of England the name is 
given to the Cotton Grass ( Eriophonim ). It is very probable, 
however, that no particular plant is intended, but that it 
means any rough, wild vegetation, especially of open moors 
and heaths. 
locusts. 
The food that to him now is as luscious as Locusts, shall be to him shortly 
as bitter as Coloquintida.— Othello, i. 3, 354. 
The Locust is the fruit of the Carob tree (Ceralonia siliqua ), 
a tree that grows naturally in many parts of the South of 
1 “ Between the barke and the woode of this tree, there bee thin 
pellicles or skins lying in many folds together, whereof are made bands 
and cords called Bazen ropes.”— Philemon FIolland’s Pliny's Nat. 
Hist. xvi. 14. The chapter is headed “Of the Line or Linden Tree.” 
