Lambs' Lettuce, or Corn Salad, is a distinct plant, one of the Valerian tribe, which was formerly classed as a Lettuce, by name, _Lactuca agnina_, either because it appears about the time when lambs (_agni_) are dropped, or because it is a favourite food of lambs. The French call this _salade de Pretre_, "monks' salad," and in reference thereto an old writer has said: "It certainly deserves a place among the _penitential_ herbs, for the stomach that admits it is apt to cry _peccavi_." The same plant is also known by the title of the White Pot Herb, in contrast to the _Olus atrum_, or Black Pot Herb. It grows wild in the banks of hedges and waste cornfields, and is cultivated in our kitchen gardens as a salad herb, the Milk Grass, being called botanically the _Valerianella olitoria_, and having been in request as a spring medicine among country folk in former days. By genus it is a _Fedia_, and bears diminutive white flowers resembling glass. Gerard says: "We know the Lambs' Lettuce as _Loblollie_; and it serves in winter as a salad herb, among others none of the worst." In France it goes by the names _manche_ and _broussette_. A medicinal tincture is made (H.) from the fresh root. [313] The black pot-herb--so called from the dark colour of its fruit--is an umbelliferous plant, (_Smyrnium olusatrum_) or Alexanders, often found in the vicinity of abbeys, and probably therefore held in former repute by the Monks. Its names are derived from _Smyrna_, myrrh, in allusion to the odour of the plant; and from _Macedonicum_, or the parsley of Macedon, Alexander's country. The herb was also known as Stanmarch. It grows on waste places by rivers near the sea, having been formerly cultivated like celery, which has now supplanted it. When boiled it is eaten with avidity by sailors returning from long voyages, who happen to land at the South Western corner of Anglesea. LILY OF THE VALLEY. The Lily of the Valley grows wild in many of our English woods, and possesses special curative virtues, which give it, according to modern knowledge, a just place among Herbal Simples of repute. This is the parent flower of our graceful, sweet-scented scape of pendent, milk-white little floral bells, enshrined within two broad leafy blades of dark green, and finding general favour for the _jardiniere_, or the button-hole. Its name _Convallaria majalis_ is derived from _convallis_, "a valley," and _majalis_, "belonging to the month of May," when this Lily comes into flower.