There is, doubtless, a good deal of scattered information respecting old English wild flowers to be met with, not only in books, but also among our rural population, stored up by village sages. Contributions of this description would surely be welcome in "N. & Q." H. C. K. ---- Rectory, Hereford. Herbs of all kinds were, some two hundred years ago, esteemed of much value as medicine; for in a curious, and I believe rather scarce, pharmacopoeia by Wm. Salmon, date 1693, I find some 414 pages devoted to their uses. This pharmacopoeia, or _Compleat English Physician_, was dedicated to Mary, second Queen of England, Scotland, France, Ireland, &c., and appears to have been the first. The preface says "it was the first of that kind extant in the world, a subject for which we have no precedent." "I have not trusted," he says, "to the reports of authors, but have wrote as an eye-witness in describing most things therein; and it is nothing but what I know and have learnt by daily experience for thirty years together, so that my prescriptions may in some measure plead a privilege above the performances of other men." 1. _Capsella_ (_Bursa pastoris_) he describes as cold 1^o, and dry in 2^o, binding and astringent. Good against spitting of blood or haemorrhage of the nose, and other fluxes of the bowels. The leaves, of which [dr.]j. in powder may be given. The juice inspissate, drunk with wine, helps ague. A cataplasm applied in inflammations, Anthony's fire, &c., represses them. 2. _Veronica Chamaedrys_ he calls _Euphrasia_, _Euphrosunee_, and says it is much commended by Arnoldus de Villa Nova, who asserts that it not only helps dimness of the sight, but the use of it {37} makes old men to read small letters without spectacles, who could scarcely read great letters with spectacles before; but that it did restore their sight who had been a long time blind. Truly a most wonderful plant; and, if he freely used it, must have been a great drawback to spectacle-makers.