=BEDSTRAW.=--Our Lady’s Bedstraw (_Galium verum_) filled the manger on which the infant Jesus was laid. In a painting of the Nativity by N. Poussin, this straw is introduced. From its soft puffy stems and golden flowers, this grass was in bygone times used for bedding, even by ladies of rank,--whence the expression of their being “in the straw.”----_Galium_ was formerly employed to curdle the milk in cheese-making, and was also used before the introduction of Annatto, to give a rich colour to Cheshire cheese. The old herbalists affirmed that the root stirred up amorous desires, if drunk in wine, and that the flowers would produce the same effect if smelt long enough. Robert Turner says: “It challenges the preheminence above Maywort, for preventing the sore weariness of travellers: the decoction of the herb and flowers, used warm, is excellent good to bath the surbated feet of footmen and lackies in hot weather, and also to lissome and mollifie the stiffness and weariness of their joynts and sinews.”----In France, _Galium_ is considered to be a remedy in cases of epilepsy.----Lady’s Bedstraw is under the dominion of Venus. =BEECH.=--Vieing with the Ash in stateliness and grandeur of outline, the Beech (_Fagus_) is worthily given by Rapin the second place among trees. “Mixt with huge Oaks, as next in rank and state, Their kindred Beech and Cerris claim a seat.” According to Lucian, the oracles of Jupiter at Dodona were delivered not only through the medium of the sacred Oaks in the prophetic grove surrounding the temple, but also by Beeches which grew there. A large part, if not the whole, of the Greek ship _Argo_ was built of _Fagus_, or Beech timber, and as certain beams in the vessel gave oracles to the Argonauts, and warned them against the approach of calamities, it is probable that some, at least, of these prophetic beams were hewn from the Dodonæan Beeches. It was from the top of two Beech-trees that Minerva and Apollo, in the form of vultures, selected to watch the fight between the Greeks and the Trojans.----The connection of the tree with the god Bacchus appears to have been confined to its employment in the manufacture of bowls for wine in the happy time when “No wars did men molest, and only Beechen bowls were in request.” Cowley alludes to this in the words-- “He sings the Bacchus, patron of the Vine, The Beechen bowl foams with a flood of wine.” Virgil notices the use of its smooth and green bark for receiving inscriptions from the “sylvan pen of lovers;” and Ovid, in his epistle from Œnone to Paris, refers to the same custom, gracefully noting that the name of the fair one would grow and spread with the growth of the tree:-- “The Beeches, faithful guardians of your flame, Bear on their wounded trunks Œnone’s name, And as their trunks, so still the letters grow; Spread on, and fair aloft my titles show.”