LADY WILKINSON'S WEEDS AND WILD FLOWERS. * IN this volume upon

the weeds and wild flowers of our country, Lady Wilkinson has combined, in a very agreeable manner, the poetry and the pleasures of flowers, as well as the profit that may be made of them. Some of her "flowers" perhaps, are scarcely to be called wild, for in roses she travels—how could she help it? from the wild rose to the queen of the garden ; while the " bind- weed,"—the wild convolvulus, naturally leads to the specimens we make larger by cultivation. Still the proposed subject is closely adhered to, and the great majority of plants are really and truly wild, such as we are apt to pass unnoticed by, or gaze upon slightingly, when we meet them in lanes, commons, woodlands, or waste places.

The plan of the book is to describe the plant, to tell of its local- ities—where its range is limited, to glean from poets "or famous or obscure" the praises they have sung or the remarks they may have made, and to point out the uses to which the flower, or even the weed, may be turned. And it is not always the most pro- mising looking that yields the most profit—" handsome is that handsome does." Who that entertains reminiscencies of the stinging-nettle would imagine to how many accounts it may be turned? Man can feed upon it, so can beasts ; its fibres may be woven into linen, or make paper ; its medical uses may per- haps be believed without authority, upon the principle that physic is powerful in proportion to its unpleasantness ; and lastly, its leaf is in itself its own antidote—nettle juice is one of the best cures for the nettle sting. Tom Campbell had made some dis- coveries of its uses, no doubt in his early days in Scotland ; but Lady Wilkinson has collected many more instances of its utility than fell within the experience of the bald of Hope.

"The poet Campbell in his Letters from the South,' writes, last of all my eyes luxuriated in looking on a large bed of nettles. Oh, wretched taste. Your English prejudice perhaps, will exclaim, "is not the nettle a weed, if possible, more vile than even your Scottish thistle ?" But be not nettled, my friend, at my praise of this useful weed. In Scotland I have eaten nettles ; I have slept in nettle-sheets, and I have dined off a nettle- table-cloth. The young and tender nettle is an excellent pot-herb. The stalks of the old nettle are as good as flax for making cloth. I have heard my mother say, that she thought nettle-cloth more durable than any other species of linen.' The writer was not, however, aware that in the county of Shropshire a similar use is made of the plant, as is also the case in Ire- land ; the stalks being dressed for the purpose in the same manner as those of flax and hemp, to the last of which, as before stated, the nettle is allied. The French make a peculiar and excellent paper from these fibres. In America, where the nettle is one of the weeds which so singularly and so constantly follow the footsteps of the whites,' it is manufactured into linen ; as it is in Siberia also. The natives of Kamschatka use it to form their fishing-lines ; and in Hindustan the delicate and far-famed grass- cloth,' (Chu IN is woven from the fibres of an indigenous nettle ; while the old German name for muslin, nesseltuch, (nettle-cloth) shows, as Schleiden observes, how general must formerly have been the use of this

substance. • •

"An excellent rennet is procured from the nettle, a saturated' solution of salt being made with a decoction of the plant, which is then bottled for use. A spoonful of this liquid will coagulate a large bowl of milk without im- parting to it any disagreeable flavour, a desideratum not always attainable with the ordinary rennet. The expressed juice also imparts a beautiful and permanent green dye to wool, while the roots, boiled with alum, yield a good yellow. Both these dyes are constantly employed by the Welsh pea- sant weavers. And the modern Greeks use the last to stain the eggs which they present as offerings at the Easter f "Many animals will not eat this plant when in a growing state ; but, when partially or wholly dried, it forms a most valuable fodder in the scarce time of early spring. It is more especially adapted for cows, as it increases the quantity and improves the quality of their milk; and a pint of milk is, in rustic districts, an equivalent for the permission to cut nettles for each day's feed for a cow, in the months of April and May. That is, those who have cows give this quantity to their neighbours for permission to cut the nettles in their hedge-rows, rick-yards, &e. In Russia, Sweden, and Hol- land, it is largely cultivated for this purpose, and is mown five or six times an th year. In the north of England it is boiled as food for pigs ; and every thrifty farmer's wife knows how eagerly, and with how good a result, the chopped leaves are devoured by poultry. Indeed, they are almost an essential article of diet to young turkeys, although their sting is usually fatal to the tender little creatures, who, if not regularly- supplied with them in their food, seem, as if by an instinctive want, to wander off to the nettle- beds where they perish miserably.

" The great amount of heat evolved by the nettle during the process of

• Weeds and Wild Flowers: their uses, Legends, and Literature. By Lady Wilkinson, Published by Van Voorst. fermentation makes it one of the best substances for the formation of 'he

beds,' for which purpose it is much prized by market-gardeners. t- • • •

"It is really to be regretted that the fibres of the nettle are not more ex tensively used in our own country, as the plant thrives everywhere '" may be grown in places which can be rendered subservient to few ethic purposes. Though in order to produce a truly fine crop, rich land is indys: pensable."

The last remark of Lady Wilkinson is natural, and frequent', suggests itself when things that might be made useful are not proved, or suffered to perish unused. The world, however, hi generally right in what it does in this way. Rags are turned to account in paper-making, because they have been paid for and worn out as linen, and are of no use for any other purpose except upon a limited scale, as making lint. Straw again is grown for its corn ; it would never do to grow straw merely to make paper. So of wild plants ; they are either limited in quantity, though they may not appear so from there being no demand for them, or the expense of collecting, transporting, and preparing them would cost more than the substances in actual use. So likewise in in. proving say nettles for salad; we have lettuces which are better. They may pass as a shift or a variety, when nothing better can be had, just as whole districts eat chestnuts in lieu of bread, while in Norway they mix sawdust with their meal when crops run short. Well, these may do when there is nothing else left; but mankind will leave off living on chestnuts as soon as they can get barley bread, much more wheaten. Then the experienced count the cost of improvement, and will not give up rich laud ,,te produce a truly fine crop" of nettles. The true rule of proceeding is that followed in medicine, where the good gives place to the better or the best. Gentian is retained as a mild tonic; but many of the old herbalist remedies are dropped, or abandoned to the rustics who cannot pay for anything better. Questions of "extended usefulness" however do not constitute the principal part of the book. There is beauty, there is poetry —at least in quotation, there is antiquity, there is heraldry. Here are examples of most of the topics combined in the beautiful

broom.

" Oh, the broom, the yellow broom, The ancient poets sung it, And still the poets love to lie The summer hours among it.'

"Nor is it very wonderful that they should do so; not alone on account of the golden glories of its radiant bloom, but because it grows in spots which are a very paradise to the poet's heart. Shunninethe tranquil mea- dows and fertile corn-lands of better cared-for tracts, it lives away on the breezy hill-side, where no maledictory glance from the eye of the practical agriculturist turns upon its beauties. And there, with the breezes of hea- ven blowing all around, it bathes in the flooding sunlight, and opens a very sea of blossoms, whose tints seem to have been won from that light itself. There, too, in its taper branchkts the linnets build, and seem to furnish it with a living voice of joy. and gladness, so that wageless hymns of thankful-

ness and praise rise like incense from its groves. * * *

"Nor is the bonnie broom' less conspicuous in the annals of heraldry, and consequently in the history of dress ; although under this head it is difficult, indeed impossible, to separate the very distinct though closely al- lied yllants the genista, properly so called, or greenweed, and the cytisus, or real broom. In fact, either appears to have been indifferently, used. Ordi- nary history tells us that Henry H. of England, wearing the broom (plants genista) in his cap, assumed and transmitted the now royal surname of Plantagenet. But there is strong evidence to prove that Fulke, Earl of Anjou, the grandfather of Henry, wore the plant as the symbol of humility, in his penitential pilgrimage to the Holy Land ; while it is certain that the son of this Earl, Geoftry, surnamed Pulcher, or Le Bel, both used the crest and bore the name, or more properly soubriquet, surnames being then un- known."

The hop, (who would suppose it?) comes under the head of weeds, and was for centuries only an indigenous weed. The time of its introduction, or rather cultivation, is not accurately fixed. petition against its use was addressed to Henry the Sixth, and popular sayings or doggrel that connected hops with heresy, would carry its use back to Richard the Second, if not earlier. The op- position to hops, however, was as much interested as pious.

"Its use was considered prejudicial to the interests of the ground-i7, ale-hoof, sweet-gale, or bog-myrtle, and other plants, which were previmigy employed to give a bitter taste to British ale ; for, certainly, even a heresy in the Catholic Church could scarcely have excited more acrimonious feeling than the question between ale and beer. "For a controversy between ale and beer, it was ; and to say that hops and beer Came together into England is simply a truism; since at first beer signified an infusion of barley flavoured with the hop ; while ale was a name restricted to the same infusion, flavoured with any other herb. Nor are the two terms very clearly defined in our language, even at the present day. To this distinction the curious old song, The Ex-ale-tation of Ale, refers— But now, so they say, beer bears it away,

The more is the pity, if right might prevail;

.For with this same beer came in heresy here, The old Catholic drink is a good pot of ale:"

Ale and beer, derived from malt, and a bitter infusion, were not the only beverages of ancient times. The barbarous Danes brewed a something from the heather, which was called " heather-ale." Happily, however, the art is lost; for we cannot think the beverage was of much value, notwithstanding this tale or legend.

"When the Danes were building the Castle of Ballyportree, in Western Clare they compelled men from every part of the country to render them

yawn n assistance, making them work without rest or refreshment by day and by night, and that as each overtasked frame gave way the body was t the wall and built into the vast sepulchral edifice. The feelings with vfliish the castle as well as its after inhabitants were regarded, may be better ima- gined thaia. described ; and when the Danes were nearly expelled from the country, this castlet the last stronghold of which they retained possession, made so fierce a resistance against the natives, that when it at length sur- rendered only three of the garrison were found alive ; these were a father and two sons, the last of their countrymen then remaining in the island. Their conquerors, with uplifted axe, proposed to spare their lives, and even Aye them safb passage to their own land, if they would instruct them in the We-fully guarded secret of brewing the heather-ale. For some time neither threat nor 'promise could avail, or extort the sacred mystery; after a time, ,e however, the father consented, only demanding that his children should be ut to death before he made it known, lest on reaching their native country beyshould betray what he had done, and so cause him to be deprived of life. Despising, perhaps, in their hearts his cowardice, the Irish chiefs °bevel his behest and killed the two sons; upon which the father exclaimed, with triumph in his voice, 'Fools! I saw that your threats and promises were beginning to influence my sons, for they were but boys, and might have yielded, but now our secret is safe, for neither can have effect on me!' in another moment this martyr of an insufficient cause was hewn in pieces, and thus it happened that the mystery remained unrevealed, though we must suppose it to be still lurking, in cherished secrecy, in its native Den- mark; lurking, perhaps, amidst the byways of that vast heath or heather- tract which forms an object of so much interest in the study of the distribu- tion of plants ; stretching, with greater or less interruptions, from the ex- freme point of Jutland down to latitude 52* on the south, and westward to the ocean, and eastward over a great part of northern Germany."

The primary use of flowers would seem to lie in their perfume, and so it was for ages. But chemistry has changed all that For some years it has been known that nothing of the lily or the eglantine entered into the so-named perfumes. Still the adulte- rator did use flowers of some kind, but now even flowers are not needed.

"In the nineteenth century, the rose can even be dispensed with in the manufacture of rose-water' we ignore the necessity of gathering otto of roses from so uncertain a field as that in which the blossoms grow; chemis- try has discovered that the refuse of the organic kingdom is the source from which we may henceforth obtain our 'essence of roses' ; the Bulgarian tose.grounds may grow sterile and bleak, the Vale of Kashmir become arid and bare, but we heed it not. The rose-essence of our future years will be procured from the offal which was before a nuisance to us, just as our va- ta'lle is in future to be extracted from pit-coal; and our essence of pears from creosote, ends of old ropes, and other such matters."

The book is illustrated by a dozen coloured engravings fur- nished to Lady Wilkinson, by Mrs. Berrington, and twenty-six wood-cuts. It is a neatly elegant volume fit for the table as well as the shelf.