This persuasion that the things near us, and under our feet, stand in that relationship from some natural affinity they have to our welfare, appears to be most firmly rooted with respect to the medical herbs, whether growing wild in the fields and woods, or about the old homesteads, though the names of most of them are now forgotten. A slight reference to the herbals and receipt books of the last century would show the good uses to which they were applied, as that the virtues of common sense are also disowned, and oftentimes trodden under foot. Certainly, they are less esteemed than formerly, being superseded, for the most part, by drugs less efficacious because less related geographically to our flesh, and not finding acquaintance therewith. Doubtless many superstitions were cherished about them in ancient heads, yet all helpful to the cure. The sweet fennel had its place in the rural garden, and was valued, not as a spice merely, but as a sacred seed, associated with worship, sprigs of it, as of caraway and dill, being taken to the pews, for appetizing the service. So the balm and rue had their sacredness. Pliny commends these natives to every housekeeper. "A good housewife," he says, "goes to her herb garden, instead of a spice shop, for seasonings, and thus preserves the health of her family, by saving her purse." So the poet sends her there, too, for spouse-keeping. "When Venus would her dear Ascanius keep, A prisoner in the downy bands of sleep, She odorous herbs and flowers beneath him spread, As the most soft and sweetest bed, Not her own lap would more have charmed his head." VI.--TABLE PLANTS. The last two centuries have added several plants of eminent virtues to the products of the orchard and garden. The cucumber, the potato, sweet corn, the melon, are the principal acquisitions, especially the last named, for that line of Marvell's-- "Stumbling on melons as I pass," must be taken rhetorically, since Evelyn informs us, this fruit had but just been introduced into England from Spain, in the poet's time, and the others but a little before. He says, "I myself remember when an ordinary melon would have sold for five or six shillings. 'Tis a fruit not only superior to all of the gourd kind, but paragon with the noblest of the garden." And of the cucumber, "This fruit, now so universally eaten, was accounted little better than poison within my memory." Columella shows some good ones growing in the Roman gardens:-- "The crooked cucumber, the pregnant gourd, Sometimes from arbors pendant, and sometimes Snake-like, through the cold shades of grass they creep, And from the summer's sun a shelter seek."