Bishop Fleetwood gives the following description, by Hermannus Nicolaus, of what he calls the Distillatory Plant:--“Great are the works of the Lord, says the wise man; we cannot consider them without ravishment. The Distillatory Plant is one of these prodigies of nature, which we cannot behold without being struck with admiration. And what most surprises me is the delicious nectar, with which it has often supplied me in so great abundance to refresh me when I was thirsty to death and unsufferably weary.... But the greatest wonder of it is the little purse, or if you will, a small vessel, as long and as big as the little finger, that is at the end of each leaf. It opens and shuts with a little lid that is fastened to the top of it. These little purses are full of a cool, sweet, clear cordial and very agreeable water. The kindness this liquor has done me when I have been parched up with thirst, makes me always think of it with pleasure. One plant yields enough to refresh and quench the thirst of a man who is very dry. The plant attracts by its roots the moisture of the earth, which the sun by his heat rarifies and raises up through the stem and the branches into the leaves, where it filtrates itself to drop into the little recipients that are at the end of them. This delicious sap remains in these little vessels till it be drawn out; and it must be observed that they continue close shut till the liquor be well concocted and digested, and open of themselves when the juice is good to drink. ’Tis of wonderful virtue to extinguish speedily the heats of burning fevers. Outwardly applied, it heals ring-worms, St. Anthony’s Fire, and inflammations.” Plants Bearing Inscriptions and Figures. Gerarde has told us that in the root of the Brake Fern, the figure of a spread-eagle may be traced; and Maundevile has asserted that the fruit of the Banana, cut it how you will, exhibits a representation of the Holy Cross. L. Sarius, in his Chronicles to the year 1559, records that, in Wales, an Ash was uprooted during a tempest, and in its massive trunk, rent asunder by the violence of the storm, a cross was plainly depicted, about a foot long. This cross remained for many years visible in the shattered trunk of the Ash, and was regarded with superstitious awe by the Catholics as having been Divinely sent to reprove the officious zeal of Queen Elizabeth in banishing sacred images from the Churches.