“The English whereof,” the chronicler quaintly continues, “I could tell you, but that I fear the women of this preposterous age would be angry.” True it is that this tree, the more it is beaten the more nuts it bears. The walnut was one of the chief ingredients in the celebrated antidote against poison which was attributed to the wise king Mithridates. The formula ran as follows: “Two (wall) nuttes and two figges and twenty rewe beans, stamped together with a little suet and eaten fasting, doth defende a man from poison and pestilence that day”.[5] [5] Bullen’s _Governmente of Health_. 1558. Sage was much esteemed by the housewife for simple ailments, and its properties are embodied in the following lines, which are of great antiquity:— “Sage helpes the nerves, and by its powerfull might Palsies and Feavers, sharp it puts to flight”.[6] An old writer says, “Be sure you wash your sage for fear the Toades, who as I conceive come to it to discharge their poyson, should leave some of their venom upon the Leaves”. [6] William Coles, _Adam in Eden_. 1657. Of rue, which was largely used as a carminative, the following couplet has been handed down:— “Rue maketh chast, and eke preserveth sight, Infuseth wit, and Fleas doth put to flight”. Tradition says that a weasel, going to fight with a serpent, eateth rue, and rubbeth herself therewith to avoid his poison. Crollius states: “The sign of the cross upon the seed of the rue, drives away all phantoms and evil spirits by signature”. Henbane, the Latins called Apollinaris, either from Apollo, the inventor of physic, or because it makes men mad like unto Apollo’s creatures when they deliver his oracles. “It was called in English henbane, because the seeds are hurtful to hens,” says William Coles. “The fumes of the dryed herb when burnt, will make Hens fall from their roosting place as though they were dead.” Of the moonwort, a simple used to allay bleeding and applied to fractures, an old tradition says that it can be used to open locks, fetters, and shoes from those horses feet that go on the places where it groweth, and of this opinion was Culpepper, who, though he railed against superstition in others, tells a story of a troop of horse of the Earl of Essex, which being drawn up in a body, many of them lost their shoes upon White Downe in Devonshire, near Tiverton, because moonwort grows upon the heaths.