nip. According to Bryant, the roots of this vegetable "seem to claim the preference to all other esculent roots of English growth, they being very agreeable to most palates, easy of digestion, and affording excellent nourishment."* This high character, however, seems now to be lost, for parsnips are comparatively little esteemed, while the reputation of the carrot and turnip remains undiminished. To many persons, indeed, the sweet mawkish taste of the parsnip, resembling a frosted potato, is extremely disagreeable. It was formerly used in the North of Ireland for making a kind of beer, being brewed instead of malt, with hops, and fermented with yeast. It has also been occasionally made into bread; on which circumstance Gerard makes the following laconic observation : "There is a good and pleasant foode or bread made of the rootes of parsneps, as my friend master Plat hath set foorth, in his booke of Experimenes, which I have made no triall of, nor meane to do." Salmon, however, in his Herbal, published in 1710, above a century after Gerard, attributes to the bread of parsnips, which was made of the boiled roots baked with wheaten flour, all the virtues of the plant, which he considered as of no trifling description, since he asserts that "boiled, baked, or roasted parsnips, eaten as common food, sweeten the blood and juices above all other roots in the world; restore in consumptions, and make the eater of them * Flora Diætetica, p. 40. + Bryant. Fl. Diætetica.

Herbal, p. 871.

PARSLEY AND MANDRAKES.

5

grow fat and fleshy." In some parts of France these roots are cultivated in great abundance, and form a principal part of the food of the populace during winter. They are esteemed an excellent

diet for horses and cattle.+

The third common plant mentioned as an example of the fusiform root is the radish. It was originally brought from China, and its use as a salad is too well known to require comment. Common parsley, also, has a root of this description, and one variety of it, much cultivated in Holland, has roots as large as carrots, and is brought to market like the latter tied up in bundles. Parsley came originally from Sardinia.

The fusiform root often forks into two or more divisions, as may not unfrequently be seen in the plants just noticed, but in some other species it is of more regular occurrence. The mandrake (Atropa Mandragora) is a memorable example, since from so simple a circumstance arose a most absurd superstition, which at one period was widely prevalent. The mandrake is common in many of the hotter climates of Europe, and its fusiform root is often forked, so as to present a distant similitude to the

* Young mentions that about Morlaix, "and in general through the bishopric of Pol de Leon, the culture of parsnips is of very great consequence to the people. Almost half the country subsists on them in winter, boiled in soup, &c. and their horses are in general fed with them.". Tour in France.

"They are reckoned the best of all foods for a horse, and much exceeding oats; bullocks fatten quicker and better on them than on any other food." — Ibid.

lower half of the human figure; and, if the plant be pulled when the fruit is ripe, one of the berries may be supposed to represent the head, and then the whole figure will be tolerably complete. Impostors, taking advantage of the credulity of mankind, carved the roots of briony, and other plants, into the human form, and pretended that they were mandrakes, and the most incredible virtues were attributed to them in removing infirmities, and in preserving from misfortunes. There would have been little sale however for such factitious amulets had the imposition stopped here. The mandrake was not an uncommon plant, and a root of it could at any time have been procured; but it was industriously reported, and as credulously believed, that to pull it up would be followed by the instantaneous death of the perpetrator; that it shrieked, or groaned, when separated from the ground; and that whoever was unfortunate enough to hear the shriek, died shortly after, or became afflicted with madness. Shakspeare, in the fourth act of Romeo and Juliet, speaks of the shrieks of mandrakes

Torn out of the earth,

That living mortals hearing them, run mad;

and in the second part of Henry the Sixth, Suffolk

says,

Would curses kill as doth the mandrake's groan,

I would invent as bitter searching terms,

As curst, as harsh, and horrible to hear.

When, however, the root was once dislodged from its place of growth, the danger ceased, and it be

MANDRAKE, ITS HISTORY.

came the good genius of its possessor. The mode (or at least the reported mode) of uprooting it, was to fasten the tail of a dog by cords to the bottom of the stem, and then the animal was whipped, until by his struggles the plant was dragged from the earth, while the persons who directed this operation, had their ears filled with pitch, lest they should hear the fatal shriek, or groan.

The dog of course fell dead at the time, or soon after.

The prices obtained for the factitious mandrakes were very great. A mountebank, whom Matthiolus had cured of some disease at Rome, showed him a great many, and informed him, that he sometimes for a single specimen received twenty-five, or even thirty pieces of gold. The way in which they imitated the hair of the head and the beard, was not a little singular. They formed, first, the recent root of the cane, marsh-mallow, briony, or some other plant, into human shape, and where they wanted to produce the appearance of hair, they made little holes, and into these fixed grains of millet-seed. The figure was then buried in sand, until these grains germinated; it was then dug up, and the fine radicles and shoots were trimmed so as to imitate hair.

The word mandrake is said to be derived from the German man dragen, resembling man.†

* Matth. Dioscorid. p. 536.

+ Parr's Lond. Med. Dict.—The Chinese call the ginseng the man-herb, because its fusiform root forks. — Vide Hamilton's East Indies.

Sometimes, in digging up plants, we shall find that the main body of the root, instead of running onward to a point, appears as if the greater part of it had been cut off. The part (a), Fig. 2., for example, instead of running, Fig. 2.

as we should à priori expect, to (b), terminates at (c), as if by some accident all the space from (c) to (b) had been removed.

This, however, is not the effect of accident, but is natural to many plants, and forms what is called a premorse root. - Therefore

2. Radix præmorsa, a premorse root, which means bitten off, as though the lower part of the root had been bitten away by a person's teeth. It is also called an abrupt, or a stumped, or an end-bitten root; but certainly premorse is much preferable to any of these terms. Among plants having a root of this kind may be mentioned the primrose, and cowslip, the greater plantain, the valerian, various hawkweeds, and the Scabiosa succisa, or devil's-bit. We are not always, however, to expect, that when any of these plants are dug up, the root will be found uniformly premorse. This is only the case when the plant is above a year old, for during the first year it is fusiform; after that it becomes woody, dies, and rots, the upper part excepted, and