"Herein is a mine of information, which I only allude to, but it was doubtless the plan followed by most religious houses. For one thing is clear, that as the monastic gardens were all arranged on a certain and utilitarian method, there is an antecedent probability of a consequent fact. That fact is, that we shall find out if we examine the purlieus of our own ruined abbeys, many a plant medicinal or culinary which has reset itself and persisted in its original _locale_ for four centuries, though its original native earth and climate was not that of England. "Such herbs proper for making salves and lotions are plentifully mentioned in part i. 301-455 of Ducange, v. _areola florarium_, _lilietum_, &c., and there is a catalogue of _des plus excellentes fruits qui se cultivent chez les Chartreux_ (Paris, 1752.) Also, as a specimen of this sort of "find," the Woolhope Natural Club found the valuable medicinal plant asarabica (_asarum Europeum_) in the forest of Deerfold, having wandered from the old abbey garden, and perpetuated itself for ages. This one instance shows how the old gardeners had introduced foreign plants into their wort-beds. "Many writers have told me, he goes on to observe, but especially a Franciscan Father of the Holy Land and two Franciscan Sisters from a hospital at Vialas (_Lazere_) par Genalhac, that-- "1. They use elm bark for cutaneous eruptions, herpes, and lepra. Four ounces of the bark boiled in decoction in two quarts of water down to one quart. That half a pint given twice a day has made inveterate eruptions of lepra, both dry and humid, to disappear. "2. The rose burdock--_lappa rosea_--they give in cases of lepra _icthyosis_, and it has succeeded where other remedies had failed. "3. They have used also the root of the mulberry-tree. Half a dram of the powder to a dose. "4. _Lapathum bononicense_, or fiddle-dock, and also the dwarf trefoil--_trefolium pusillum_. "The following is the list of simples which I obtained from the Lazar-house still existing in Provence, les Alpes Maritimes, and from that in Cyprus, and especially Nicosia, as also from the well-known Leper hospital in Provence: "Food, baths, and oleaginous applications stand first. Then some preparation of the following ordinary simples, which were most known among our own common people, and which are still used in various parts of England by simple folk for skin diseases and sores. You will see how they entered into the monastic pharmacopoeia of the middle ages, how they were at their doors, and especially cultivated in monastery gardens.