PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 189 
wise in the top, for that will ripen those that are most 
unready ” (“ New Orchard,” p. 96). 
The “Nettle of India” (No. 5) has puzzled the com¬ 
mentators. It is probably not the true reading; if the true 
reading, it may only mean a Nettle of extra-stinging quality; 
but it may also mean an Eastern plant that was used to produce 
cowage, or cow-itch. “ The hairs of the pods of Mucuna 
ftruriens , &c., constitute the substance called cow-itch, a 
mechanical Anthelmintic.” —Lindley. This plant is said to 
have been called the Nettle of India, but I do not find it so 
named in Shakespeare’s time. 
In other points the Nettle is a most interesting plant. Micro- 
scopists find in it most beautiful objects for the microscope; 
entomologists value it, for it is such a favourite of butterflies 
and other insects, that in Britain alone upwards of thirty insects 
feed solely on the Nettle plant, and it is one of those curious 
plants which mark the progress of civilization by following man 
wherever he goes. 1 
But as a garden plant the only advice to be given is to keep 
it out of the garden by every means. In good cultivated 
ground it becomes a sad weed if once allowed a settlement. 
The Himalayan Boehmerias, however, are handsome, but only 
for their foliage; and though we cannot, perhaps, admit our 
roadside Dead Nettles, which however are much handsomer 
than many foreign flowers which we carefully tend and prize, 
yet the Austrian Dead Nettle (.Lamium orvala , “Bot. Mag.,” 
v. 172) may be well admitted as a handsome garden plant. 
IRut, set ibaael 
IRutmeg* 
(1) He’s [the horse] of the colour of the Nutmeg. 
Henry V j iii. 7, 20. 
1 “L’ortie s’etablit partout dans les contrees temperees a la suite de 
1’homme pour disparaitre bientbt si le lieu on elle s’est ainsi implantee cesse 
d’etre habite.”—M. Lavaillee, Sur les Arbres, &C., 1878. 
