4. Geum urbanum he calls Caryophyllata, Herba benedicta, and Geum Plinii, and should be gathered, he says, in the middle of March, for then it smells sweetest, and is most aromatic. Hot and dry in the 2o, binding, strengthening, discussive, cephalic, neurotic, and cardiac. Is a good preservative against epidemic and contagious disease; helps digestion. The powder of the root, dose ʒj. The decoction, in wine, stops spitting of blood, dose ʒss to ʒjss. The saline tincture opens all obstructions of the viscera, dose ʒj to ʒiij.
Should Enivri wish to know the medical virtues of our wild plants, I have no doubt but that this worthy old physician will tell him what virtues they were considered to possess in his day, at least by himself; and I can assure him that 1195 of the English Physician's pages ascribe marvellous properties, not only to plants, but to animals, fish, and even the bones of a stag's heart.
R. J. Shaw.
JACOB BOBART.
(Vol. vii., pp. 428. 578.)
I am exceedingly obliged for the information afforded by Dr. E. F. Rimbault concerning the Bobarts. Can he give me any more communication concerning them? I am anxious to learn all I can. I have old Jacob Bobart's signature, bearing date 1659, in which he spells his name with an e instead of a, which seems to have been altered to an a by his son Jacob.
In Vertumnus it says Bobart's Hortes Siccus was in twenty volumes; but the Oxford Botanic Garden Guide only mentions twelve quarto volumes: which is correct, and where is it? In one of my copies of Vertumnus, a scrap of paper is fixed to p. 29., and the following is written upon it:
"The Hortus Siccus here alluded to was sold at the Rev. Mr. Hodgkinson's sale at Sarsden, to Mrs. De Salis, wife of Dr. De Salis."
Is there any pedigree of the family?