3. _Primula veris_, he says, more properly belongs to the primrose than cowslip. The root is haumatic, and helps pains in the back. The herb is cephalic, neurotic, and arthritic. The juice or essence, with spirits of wine, stops all manner of fluxes, is excellent against palsy, gout, and pains, and distempers of the nerves and joints. A cataplasm of the juice, with rye meal, is good against luxations and ruptures. The flowers are good against palsy, numbness, convulsions, and cramps, being given in a sulphurous or a saline tincture, or an oily tincture, or an essence of the juice with spirits of wine. The juice of the flowers, or an ointment of the _flower_ or its juice, cleanses the skin from spots, though the worthy old physician only gives a receipt for making essence as follows: Beat the whole plant well in a mortar; add to it an equal quantity of brandy or spirits of wine; close up tight in a large bolt-head, and set it to digest in a very gentle sand-heat for three months. Strain out all the liquor, which close up in a bolt-head again, and digest in a gentle sand-heat for two months more. Rather a troublesome and slow process this. 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 2^o, binding, strengthening, discussive, cephalic, neurotic, and cardiac. Is a good preservative against epidemic and contagious disease; helps digestion. The powder of the root, dose [dr.]j. The decoction, in wine, stops spitting of blood, dose [dr.]ss to [dr.]jss. The saline tincture opens all obstructions of the viscera, dose [dr.]j to [dr.]iij. 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: