=BUTCHER’S BROOM.=--A species of Butcher’s Broom, _Ruscus hypoglossum_, was the Alexandrian Laurel of the Romans, who formed of this shrub the so-called Laurel crowns worn by distinguished personages. It is the Laurel generally depicted on busts, coins, &c.----The name of Butcher’s Broom was given to this plant because in olden times butchers were in the habit of sweeping their blocks with hand brooms made of its green shoots. In Italy, branches of the plant, tied together, are commonly employed as besoms for sweeping houses; and hucksters place boughs of it round bacon and cheese to defend them from the mice. The _Ruscus aculeatus_, besides its ordinary name of Butcher’s Broom, is called Knee-holme, Knee-pulver, Knee-holly, Pettigree, and sometimes Jews’ Myrtle, because it is sold to the Jews for use during the Feast of the Tabernacles. In combination with Horse-radish, the plant, boiled for a decoction, is said to be serviceable in cases of dropsy; and its boughs are often used in this country for flogging chilblains.----Butcher’s Broom has been used and claimed by the Earls of Sutherland as the distinguishing badge of their followers and clan. The present Duke retains it, and every Sutherland volunteer still wears a sprig of Butcher’s Broom in his bonnet on field days.----Butcher’s Broom is under the dominion of Mars. BUTTERCUPS.--See Ranunculus. =CABBAGE.=--A Grecian legend recounts that the Cabbage (_Brassica_) sprang from the tears of Lycurgus, Prince of Thrace, whom Dionysus had bound to a Vine-stock as a punishment for the destruction of Vines of which the Prince had been guilty. Perhaps this ancient legend may account for the belief that the Cabbage, like the Laurel, is inimical to the Vine; and it may also have given rise to the employment by the Egyptians and the Greeks of this vegetable as a most powerful remedy for the intoxication produced by the fruit of the Vine. Bacon, in his _Sylva Sylvarum_, says: “So the Colewort (Cabbage) is not an enemy (though that were anciently received) to the Vine onely; but it is an enemy to any other plant, because it draweth strongly the fattest juyce of the earth.” He also tells us that “it is reported that the shrub called Our Ladie’s Seal (which is a kinde of Briony) and Coleworts, set neare together, one or both will die.” Gerarde says that the Greeks called the Cabbage _Amethustos_, “not onely because it driveth away drunkennesse, but also for that it is like in colour to the pretious stone called the Amethyst.”----The ancient Ionians, in their oaths, invoked the Cabbage. Nicander calls the Cabbage a sacred plant.----In Scotland, young women determine the figure and size of their future husbands by drawing Cabbages, blindfolded, on Hallowe’en.----In some country places, the housewife considers it a lucky omen if her Cabbages grow “double,” _i.e._, with two shoots from one root; or “lucker,” that is, with the leaves spreading open.----A Cabbage stalk or stump is a