Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 70.djvu/505

'The Vertues'

It is cold and moist as Galen saith in the second degree, and is effectuall to helpe inflammations, and Saint Anthonies fire, as also the Goute, either applied by it selfe, or else in a pultis with barlie meale: it is also good for ruptures in young children. Some saith Matthiolus do highly esteeme of the destined water of the herbe against all inward inflammations and pestilent feavers, as also to helpe the rednesse of the eyes, the swellings of the cods, and of the brests before they be growen too much, for it doth not weakely repell the humours: the fresh herbe applied to the forehead, easeth the paines of the head-ache comming of heate. Duckes do greedilie devoure it, and so will Hens if it be given them mingled with branne.

The progress of world exploration that followed the discovery and colonization of the East and West Indies and the mainland of the then dark continents of Asia and America brought to European gardens many unusual plants which later writers, particularly those of the eighteenth century, carefully described, often with elaborate illustrations, in publications emanating from these public and private gardens of the old world. We give a copy of the title-page of the first work of this kind which describes and figures American plants.

 

JAC. CORNUTI

DOCTORIS MEDICI
PARISIENSIS

CANADENSIUM PLANTARUM,
aliarumque nondum editarum

HISTORIA.

*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*

PARISIIS,

M. DC. XXXV.

CUM PRIVILEGIO REGIS.

It will be noted that this bears the date of 1635, only fifteen years after the landing of the Pilgrim fathers, and is primarily a history of the plants of Canada which was then the synonym of North America. A sample illustration will give one of Cornut's figures of one of our common spring plants, and its name, Asaron canadense, the same it still bears, will show at a glance that the binomial system of naming plants was not only not invented by Linnæus, but was in common use almost a hundred years before he published a single line on botany, and more than seventy years before he was born! Our common maidenhair, the bulb-bearing fern (also illustrated here), the