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of the flute."-Mem. concerning China, his chamber, if he must needs be there Monthly Review, vol. 60, p. 563.

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LE SIEUR BLAVET. "Il avoit montré à jouer de la flûte à un grand Prince, mais très mediocre en cet art, au point que toutes les fois qu'il jouoit, un chien qu'il aimoit, aboyoit et faisoit des hurlemens effroyables. A peine Blavet embouchoit-il son instrument, l'animal se calmoit, entroit insensiblement dans une agitation voluptueuse, et venoit lécher les pieds du nouvel Orphee." This they call " le plus grand éloge qu'on puisse faire de son talent."-BACHAUMONT, Mem. Sec. vol. 4, p. 165.

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staked down purely to the drudgery of the law, whether in study or practice."— Vol. 1, p. 15.

MILLER, A. d. 1784, published a sixpenny pamphlet in behalf of the profession of music, recommending country musicians to the benevolence of those who had set on foot the Commemoration of Handel. This was ill-naturedly reviewed, Monthly Review, vol. 71, p. 389. 479. Reply to a country fiddler who remonstrated against their greater town severity.

"IN Russia the female gipsies (Rommany, they call themselves) have from time immemorial cultivated their vocal powers to such an extent, that, although in the heart of a country in which the vocal art has attained to greater perfection than in any other part of the world, yet the principal gipsy choruses in Moscow are allowed to be unrivalled."-TURNER, Sac. Hist. vol. 3, p. 260.

Herrick, vol. 1, p. 131.—To music to becalm his fever.

Medical Botany.

Phil. Trans. Abr. vol. 6, p. 459. A GOOD paper. The first inference was, that plants | of resemblant growth must have resemblant qualities, then those of resemblant taste and smell.

Ibid. vol. 9, p. 43. No safe criterion this, for the roots of carrots, parsnips, and many other of the umbelliferous plants, are daily used as food; but the water hemlock and Lobel's Enanthe,' though of the same class, are most certain poisons.

Ibid. vol. 13, p. 283. THERE are two Saxon

See Johnson's GERARDE'S Herbal, p. 1060. He calls it Filipendula Aquatica.-J. W. W.

herbaries in the Bodleian, and two in the | especial manner characterize certain fami

Harleian Collections, the one being a translation from Lucius Apuleius of Medaura.

WATTS, vol. 3, p. 382. He thinks that "no noxious plants or fruits of mortal and malignant juice would have been appointed to grow without some plain signal mark or caution set upon them, if man had continued in his innocent state."

SERAPION MESUE, a disciple of Avicenne, native of Maridin on the Euphrates, and who lived at Cairo, judged of the virtue of plants by their qualities, and even by touch. By colour also, in which he approaches Linnæus. He observed that soil and situation produce a marked effect upon them. And he held they communicate some of their properties to each other when they grow near. This Sprengel says is entirely paradoxical. -SPRENGEL, vol. 2, p. 325.

BAPTISTA PORTA held the doctrine of signatures.-Ibid. vol. 3, p. 239. Claude Aubery de Trecourt defended it.—Ibid. p.

371.

ACCORDING to Mizaud, the Arabs used to medicate fruit, either by sowing medical herbs round the tree, or inserting drugs in its pith.-Ibid. vol. 3, 257.

He appeals to Belon for this fact.

DU CHESNE (Henri IV.'s physician) carried the notion of signatures so far, that he thought the male plant best suited to men, the female to women.-Ibid. p. 374.

EVERLI, the Armenian Saddleback, near Erzervom, แ abounds in medicinal herbs, particularly in the Tootia flower, the scent of which perfumes the air. Oculists go thither to collect this plant, and cure with it the eyes of people who have been diseased for forty years."-EVLIA EFFENDI.

"DISCOVERIES have been lately made of peculiar proximate principles, which in an

lies of plants; these principles are for the most part very powerful medicines, and are in fact the essential ingredients on which the medical virtues of the plants depend." -HERSCHEL on Nat. Phil. p. 345.

"SUCH plants as are insipid to the taste and smell, have generally little virtue; those with the most fragrant smell and sharpest taste, have the greatest virtues, of whatever kind. In general, those with a strong but agreeable taste are the most valuable; and on the contrary when a very strong taste is also a very disagreeable one; or when the strong odour of a plant has something heavy, and disagreeable, or overpowering in it, there is mischief in the herb. The few poisonous plants of this country are for the most part thus characterized.”—Monthly Review, vol. 11, p. 416. Useful Family Herbal.

THERE is said to be a plant in Norway, which, if the cattle eat, their strength decays, "as if their bones were mollified; so that without administering the bones of other cows, which those affected eat with the utmost greediness, they quickly die."-PONTOPPIDAN.' Monthly Review, vol. 12, p. 458.

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syrup of gilliflower in his sack, and had al- | the Botrys, or Jerusalem oak.-Monthly ways a tun-glass standing by him, holding | Review, vol. 71, p. 499.

a pint of small beer, which he used to stir with rosemary.”—Connoisseur, vol. 2, p. 189.

RUE was called herb of grace, because it was used in exorcisms; rosemary, remembrance, as a cephalic.-WARBURTON. N. 1. SHAKESPEARE. Rich. II. act. iii. sc. iv.

MATRICARIA Suaveolens, sweet feverfew. "A woman who could keep nothing on her stomach, and was perishing for mere want of nourishment, cured by this flower, the yellow dilks clipt into boiling water. It was the most grateful bitter that could be tasted. Her stomach, that abhorred gentian and the like, bore this, and by persevering in its use, she was cured."-HILL'S Virtues of British Herbs. Monthly Review, vol. 44, p. 414.

THE root of the male fern, two or three drams in powder, a specific for the tapeworm.2-Monthly Review, vol. 57, p. 314.

"A L'EGARD de l'étude des plantes, permettez, Madame, que je la fasse en Naturaliste, et non pas en Apothécaire; car, outre que je n'ai qu'une foi très médiocre à la médecine, je connois l'organisation des plantes sur la foi de la Nature, qui ne ment point, et je ne connois leurs vertus médicinales que sur la foi des hommes, qui sont menteurs. Je ne suis pas d'humeur à les croire sur leur parole, ni à portée de la vérifier. Ainsi, quant à moi, j'aime cent fois mieux voir dans l'émail des prez des guirlandes pour les bergères, que des herbes pour les lavemens."

ROUSSEAU, in a letter to Madame la Présidente de Verna, of Grenoble.-Mem. Secrets, t. 17, p. 310.

PLAN for generating saltpetre by planting

GERARDE says "it fully performeth all that bitter things can do."-p. 653.

2 "As Dioscorides writeth," are the words in GERARDE. Ed. Johnson ut suprà, p. 1130. J. W. W.

A SERMON is annually preached at St. Leonards, Shoreditch, on the religious uses of botanical philosophy, pursuant to the will of Mr. Fairchild, a gardener at Hoxton, who died 1729. The Royal Society appoint the preacher. Jones of Nayland preached several of these sermons.

HERBALDOWN, about a mile from Canterbury, where there is one of the three archiepiscopal hospitals. "The spot is remarked to have been peculiarly healthful, and herbalists are said to come every year to collect medicinal plants which grow only at that particular place."-Ibid. vol. 75, p. 23.

TEA made of pear-tree leaves cured a family who had been poisoned by mushrooms at Ghent. The ancients knew this property in the wild pear.-Ibid. p. 535.

WILLIAMS'S Missionary Enterprizes, p. 495.

Handling a Subject.

A LITERARY bravura this.-METASTASIO, vol. 10, p. 341.

"CONFESSO non essermi caduto in mente che la varietà de' gusti contraddicesse punto alla costanza della simplicità; potendo ottimamente andar variando quelli, senza cambiamento di questa."—Ibid. p. 367.

"CHI scorger si vanta

Qual merto e maggiore,
Fra tanto splendore,
Fra tanta beltà ?"

Ibid. vol. 11, p. 208.

"THE mirth whereof so larded with my matter,

That neither singly can be manifested
Without the show of both."

Merry Wives of Windsor, act iv. sc. vi.

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Half minted with the royal stamp of man, And half o'ercome with beast."

DRYDEN, vol. 4, p. 388.

SHAKESPEARE says, Ajax had "robbed many beasts of their particular additions; he is as valiant as the lion, churlish as the bear, slow as the elephant."-Troil, and Cres. act i. sc. ii.

GREAT huge hulky fellows, unlucky.SOPH. Ajax, v. 769-73.

DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE'S Poems, p. 44. There may be rational creatures in the world which we can neither see nor hear, nor apprehend by any of our senses.

Inoculation.

"MR. PORTER, our ambassador at Constantinople, A. D. 1755, thought it had its rise from mere superstition. A most ignorant fellow, a Georgian, and physician by prac tice, told him it was the tradition and reli gious belief of his countrymen that an angel presides over this distemper; and that to show their trust in him, and invite him to

be propitious, they take a pock from the sick person, and by a scarification insert it in one in health, generally between the fore finger and thumb. To attract the angel's good will more effectually, they hang the patient's bed with red cloth or stuff, as a colour most agreeable to him.”—Phil. Trans. Abr. vol. 10, p. 584.

In England patients have been swathed in red flannel.

Conduct of our royal family, A. d. 1736. -Ibid. p. 690.

Silence.

WHEN Don Silves de la Selva had won one of the five castles in the greatest of his adventures, two ancient men came before him, "et commencerent à debattre et disputer ensemble, sur lequel estoit meilleur, le parler, ou le taire. Mais parceque celuy qui tenoit pour le silence, mit en avant de plus fortes et pregnantes raisons, le nouveau triomphateur (D. Silves) leur commanda qu'ils se teussent, et donna sentence que la taciturnité estoit la vraye vertu."-L. 14, p. 262.

"I vow and protest there's more plague than pleasure with a secret; especially if a body mayn't mention it to four or five of one's particular acquaintance."-Betty in the Clandestine Marriage.

"TANTO custa ao acautelado e secreto o receio com que guarda e esconde o segredo, como a hum palreiro e impaciente a força com que o dissimula."-FRANCISCO RODRIGUES LOBO, t. 4, p. 104. O Desengañado.

Use of Mystification.

OMNE ignotum pro magnifico.

Every unknown for a friend: at least not to be treated as an enemy, as Jeffrey did James Grahame.

THE name for fool seems to be original in every language.

"IN comedy," says SWIFT, "the best actors play the part of the droll, whilst some second rogue is made the hero or fine gentleman. So in this farce of life, wise men pass their time in mirth, whilst fools are only serious."- Monthly Review, vol. 35, p. 136.

" METEOR-LIKE, of stuff and form perplext, Whose what and where in disputation is." COWLEY.

"QUICQUID recipitur, recipitur in modum recipientis." How this is received.

PLACING the reader in puzzledom; pleasures of this state.

WHY no reason should be given for what I chuse to do.-JONES of Nayland, vol. 5, p. 295.

NATURAL propensity to laughter. - Ibid. vol. 4, p. 117.

Philosophy of Nonsense. Morosophy. BEST learnt by talking to children and

cats.

"GAUDET stultis Natura creandis Ut malvis, atque urticis, et vilibus herbis." PALINGENIUS, p. 262.

JOHN HENDERSON and J. C. J. there is nothing without a meaning.

"NON que je me meille impudentement exempler du territoire de folie ; j'en tiens et en suis, je le confesse. Tout le monde est fol."-RABELAIS, vol. 5, p. 119.

"PANTAGRUELISME. Vous entendez que c'est certaine gayeté d'esprit confite en meLet me be the mysterious unknown, or pris des choses fortuites."-Ibid. tom. 6, p. the odd, the quaint, the erudite, &c.

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