Beans be damned by Pythagoras' sentence, for it is said, that by oft use thereof the wits are dulled and cause many dreams. Or else as other men mean, for dead men's souls be therein. Therefore Varro saith that the bishop should not eat beans. And many medley beans with bread corn, to make the bread more heavy. The stalk [of wheat] is called Stipula as ustipula, and hath that name of usta, burnt. For when it is gathered some of the straw is burnt to help and amend the land. And some is kept to fodder of beasts, and is called Palea: for it is first meat that is laid tofore beasts, namely in some countries as in Tuscany. As Pliny saith, if the seed be touched with tallow or grease it is spoilt and lost. Among the best wheat sometimes grow ill weeds and venomous, as cockle and other such, also there it is said, of corrupt dew that cleaveth to the leaves cometh corruption in corn, and maketh it as it were red or rusty. Among all manner corn, wheat beareth the prize, and to mankind nothing is more friendly, nothing more nourishing. Flax groweth in even stalks, and bears yellow flowers or blue, and after cometh hops, and therein is the seed, and when the hop beginneth to wax, then the flax is drawn up and gathered all whole, and is then lined, and afterward made to knots and little bundles, and so laid in water, and lieth there long time. And then it is taken out of the water, and laid abroad till it be dried, and twined and wend in the sun, and then bound in pretty niches and bundles. And afterward knocked, beaten, and brayed, and carfled, rodded and gnodded, ribbed and heckled, and at the last spun. Then the thread is sod and bleached, and bucked, and oft laid to drying, wetted and washed, and sprinkled with water until that it be white, after divers working and travail. Flax is needful to divers uses. For thereof is made clothing to wear, and sails to sail, and nets to fish and to hunt, and thread to sew, ropes to bind, and strings to shoot, bonds to bind, lines to mete and to measure, and sheets to rest in, and sacks, bags, and purses, to put and to keep things in. And so none herb is so needful, to so many divers uses to mankind, as is the flax. Ryndes thereof [_i.e._ of Mandragora] sodden in wine cause sleep, and abate all manner of soreness, and so that time a man feeleth unneth though he be cut, but yet Mandragora must be warily used: for it slayeth if men take much thereof.... They that dig Mandragora be busy to beware of contrary winds while they dig, and make three circles about with a sword, and abide with the digging unto the sun going down, and trow so to have the herb with the chief virtues.