THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIS'’. 23 
your garden, especially toward the full moon, they will grow 
more double, and many times change colour. 
has caused some to think it dangerous to be taken inwardly. 
There is a drink made thereof with aqua vitae and spices, and 
without any danger, used in qualms and passions of the heart: 
Cowsurps, oR PEAGLES. 
Both the wild and garden are well known. 
Time.—They flower in April and May. 
Government and Virtues.—Venus lays claim to this herb as 
her own, and it is under the sign Aries, and our city dames 
know well enough the ointment or distilled water of it adds to 
beauty, or at least restores it when it is lost. The flowers are 
held to be more effectual than the leaves, and the roots of little 
use. An ointment being made with them, taketh away spots and 
wrinkles of the skin, sun-burnings and freckles, and promotes 
beauty, they will remedy all infirmities of the head coming of 
heat and wind, as vertigo, false apparitions, phrensies, falling 
sickness, palsies, convulsions, cramps, pains in the nerves. The 
leaves are good in wounds, and the flowers take away trembling. 
If the flowers be not well dried and kept in a warm place, they 
will soon putrefy and look green. If you let the sun see them 
now and then, it will do neither the sun nor them harm. 
Because they strengthen the brain and nerves, and remedy 
palsies, the Greeks gave them the name paralysis. The flowers 
preserved or conserved, and the quantity of a nutmeg taken 
every morning, is a sufficient dose for inward diseases, but for 
wounds, spots, wrinkles, and sunburnings, an ointment is made 
of the leaves and hog’s lard. 
BuvuE-Borrue. 
It is called Cyanus, Hurtsickle, because it turns the edges 
of the sickles that reap the corn, blue-blow, corn-blow, corn- 
flower, and blue-bottle. 
Description.—lts leaves spread upon the ground, being of a 
whitish green colour, somewhat on the edges like those of Corn 
Seabious, amongst which ariseth up a stalk divided into divers 
branches beset with long leaves of a greenish colour, either but 
very little indented or not at all: the flowers are of a blue 
colour, from whence it took its name, consisting of an innumer- 
able company of small flowers set in a scaly head, not much 
unlike those of Knap-weed; the seed is smooth, bright, and 
shining, wrapped up in a woolly mantle; the root perisheth 
every year. : 
Place.—They grow in corn-fields, amongst all sorts of corn, 
peas, beans, and tares excepted. Tf you ranean them into 
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