The name of this plant is derived from two Greek words, helein, to destroy, and bora, pasture, which indicate its pernicious qualities in such situations.

The species of this plant called Christmas Rose has been named Black Hellebore, from the black colour of its roots; and Melampodium, in honour of Melampus, a celebrated physician, who flourished at Pylos, in Peloponnesus, about a hundred years after the time of Moses, or 1530 years, or thereabouts, before the birth of Christ. Melampus travelled into Egypt, which was the seat of science at that period, to study medicine. He afterwards cured the daughters of Prœtus, king of Argos, of mental derangement with Hellebore, and from this circumstance it became so celebrated a medicine for mad people, that naviga ad Anticyram was a common proverb used to hypochondriacal persons, which meant "Sail to Anticyra,” an island in the Gulf of Corinth, where the Hellebore flourished in great abundance.

Melampus, it is said, became acquainted with the cathartic qualities of the Hellebore, by observing the effects it took upon his goats, which had eaten of this vegetable. Pliny mentions that the daughters of Protus were restored to their senses by drinking the milk of goats which had fed upon Hellebore; but the earlier writers state that these

princesses were ordered to bathe in a cold fountain after taking the Hellebore, and this is the first instance upon record of the use of cathartics and bathing with a medicinal view. Melampus gained still greater honour by correcting the defects of Iphiclus's constitution, prescribing to him to take the rust of iron in his wine for ten days successively. Thus we find that the celebrated steel medicine of the present day was in use as long back as 3350 years. At that early period, the physicians were held as a sacred order of men, and Diodorus Siculus states that none durst profess physic in Egypt, without being admitted as a member of the College of Priests. They were also considered as soothsayers and prophets, from their pretending to be assisted by incantations and charms, the origin of which arts seems almost coeval with the invention of physic itself; and these solemn mysteries were no doubt resorted to in order to create a veneration and faith in the minds of the patients for their physicians, which, however ridiculous it may appear to us, might have had great effect on the minds of the vulgar, as it is an established opinion that the body is often influenced by the affections of the mind.

We have made this digression to show the origin of many of the superstitious customs of the Greeks and Romans respecting plants. That these

latter people should bring their superstitions to this country is natural, and, in many instances, we may still perceive the impression these customs made on the minds of the ignorant part of the population of our island.

The Black Hellebore was used by the ancients to purify their houses, and to hallow their dwellings; and they had a belief that by strewing or perfuming their apartments with this plant, they drove away evil spirits. This ceremony was performed with great devotion, and accompanied with the singing of solemn hymns. In the same manner they blessed their cattle with the Hellebore, to keep them free from the spells of the wicked.

What magic has bewitched the woolly dams,
And what ill eyes beheld the tender lambs.

VIRGIL, Pastoral III.

For these purposes it was dug up with many religious ceremonies, as that of first drawing a circle round the plant with a sword, and then, turning to the east, an humble prayer was made by the devotee to Apollo and Esculapius, for leave to dig up the root; and the flight of the eagle was particularly attended to during the ceremony, for when this bird approached near the spot during the celebration of the rites, it was considered so ominous as to predict the certain death of the person who took up the plant, in the course of the

year. In digging up the roots of some species of Hellebore it was thought necessary to eat garlic previously, to counteract the poisonous effluvia of the plant; yet we find that the root was afterwards dried and pounded to dust, and sniffed up the nostrils in the manner of snuff; as it is related that when Carneades, the Cyrenaic philosopher, undertook to answer the books of Zeno, he sharpened his wit and quickened his spirit, by purging his head with powdered Hellebore *.

In the year 1676, the author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy" adds the Hellebore to the other emblematical figures of his frontispiece, with the following lines:—

Borage and Hellebor fill two scenes,
Soveraign plants to purge the veins
Of melancholy, and cheer the heart

Of those black fumes which make it smart ;
To clear the brain of misty fogs,

Which dull our senses, and soul clogs ;

The best medicine that e'er God made

For this malady, if well assaid.

To these lines we add a cautionary verse from Drayton :

Here Henbane, Poppy, Hemlock here,

Procuring deadly sleeping;

Which I do minister with fear

Not fit for each man's keeping.

* Dioscorides, lib. 4, cap. 151. PLINY, lib. 25, cap. 5.

Notwithstanding the great reverence with which the ancients regarded this plant, it was considered by most of their writers as a rough medicine; and as many country people are in the habit of giving the powder of Hellebore to their children for the worms, we shall show how dangerous an herb it is, by extracting an anecdote out of Martyn's Tournefort.

"Some years ago, when the ground was covered with a very deep snow, a flock of sheep, in Oxmead, near Fulborn, in Cambridgeshire, finding nothing but this herb above the snow, ate plentifully of it. They soon appeared terribly out of order, and most of them died, a few being saved, by timely giving them some oil, which made them cast up this herb. Some of those which died, being opened, were found to have their stomachs greatly inflamed. This account I had from the man who attended them. He went with me to the very spot, and as he pointed out the herb which poisoned them, I found it to be the species of Hellebore called Niger fœtidus."

Formerly the Gauls never went to the chase without rubbing the points of their arrows with this herb, believing that it rendered all the game killed with them the more tender.

This reputed specific for the cure of melancholy and madness, was an inmate of our gardens prior