We are indebted to the monks of the middle ages for the introduction into our country, and successful cultivation, of some of our choicest fruits and most beautiful flowers; nor is it any wonder that in times when herbalism and the culling of simples was universally practised and believed in, numberless shrubs and plants of real or supposed efficacy in the cure of particular ailments should also be imported and assiduously cultivated by the same benefactors. In some cases, however, the supposed plants of virtue then introduced have in our day turned out to be no better than noisome weeds, extremely difficult of eradication, and one of these—how it found its way into this district it would be difficulty to say—is becoming a perfect pest in some parts of Lochaber. We refer to the plant commonly known as Bishopweed, Goatweed, or Herb Gerard, which the botanists have honoured by the high-sounding name Ægropodium podagraria. Gout, as its botanical name implies, was the disease in which this rank and foul-smelling weed was supposed to be of extraordinary virtue, and for anything we know to the contrary, it may still possess all the virtues at one time so confidently ascribed to it; but then you see gout is altogether unknown in Lochaber—we are too poor, and perforce live too soberly, to be visited by such aristocratic ailments—and what business therefore this weed has to grow and spread amongst us, and become unto us a nuisance and a plague, we cannot imagine: not knowing the disease, we could get on very well without the unsavoury antidote. Bishopweed, if allowed free growth in suitable soil, will quickly cover the ground, to the destruction of everything else, its innumerable stalks, crowned with pinnated ash-like leaves, attaining to the height of a foot or more. When a single plant once gets root-hold in pasture land, it spreads with amazing rapidity, damaging and crowding out the grass in all directions, so that whenever and wherever it appears its utter and thorough extirpation, whatever the labour and cost, should be insisted upon with the least possible delay. When plucked by the hand the plant emits a fœtid, sickening smell, all trace of which is only effaced from the fingers by a very thorough washing indeed. We have observed that neither horse, nor ox, nor sheep will of choice touch it, though its being in many places called goatweed would seem to indicate that it is no more rejected by that animal than many other acrid and poisonous plants and herbs which our other ruminants will not touch even if starving. Of all the ground pests with which we are acquainted, bishopweed is the worst, and we warn our readers, if ever they meet with it in any neglected corner of garden or field, to show it no mercy at all, for it is of an unmerciful nature itself, killing every blade of grass it comes in contact with, and choking unto the death every other vegetable that it can surmount and master.
The finest stag’s head and antlers that we have ever seen form a trophy in the possession of our neighbour, Mr. Bill, Kilmalieu, the magnificent “monarch of the waste” that bore them having fallen to that gentleman’s own rifle in Glengour two or three years ago. The other day, however, we were shown a set of larger horns, though not quite so handsome perhaps, or so faultless in spread and curve, and unfortunately imperfect from the loss of one of the tines, which was picked up by a shepherd in the Black Mount Forest many years ago. The size of beam throughout was something extraordinary, and one could not help regretting that it had not the head and neck attached, that it might be set up in the style for which the good city of Inverness has of recent years become so famous. Such a trophy of the chase, complete in all its parts, would have deserved the place of honour amid a thousand such trophies in the noblest hall in the kingdom. As we handled these antlers, and poised them at arm’s length with admiration, the thought suddenly struck us that Edmund Waller, the poet, must have had some such magnificent trophy before him when he burst into the following apostrophe, in which a well-known fact in the natural history of the animal is so happily interwoven with the old mythological legend:—
“O fertile head! which every year
Could such a crop of wonder bear!
The teeming earth did never bring
So soon so hard, so huge a thing:
Which, might it never have been cast,
Each year’s growth added to the last,
These lofty branches had supplied,
The earth’s bold sons’ prodigious pride;