Turner, again, is the only old herbalist who refers to the old and widespread belief that larch was fire-proof. It was largely used, he tells us, for laying under the tiles of newly-built houses, as "a sure defence against burning," and he narrates at length how Julius Cæsar was unable to burn a tower built with larch. On the old mandrake legend he is scathing. "The rootes which are counterfited and made like litle puppettes and mammettes which come to be sold in England in boxes with heir [hair] and such forme as man hath, are nothyng elles but folishe fened trifles and not naturall. For they are so trymmed of crafty theves to mocke the poore people withall and to rob them both of theyr wit and theyr money. I have in my tyme at diverse tymes takē up the rootes of mandrake out of the grounde but I never saw any such thyng upon or in them as are in and upon the pedlers rootes that are comenly to be solde in boxes. It groweth not under galloses [gallows] as a certayn doting doctor of Colon in his physick lecture dyd teach hys auditors." But he accepts without question the belief in its efficacy as an anæsthetic: "It is given to those who must be burned or cut in some place that they should not fele the burning or cuttyng." Of wine made of it, he says: "If they drynk thys drynke they shall fele no payne, but they shall fall into a forgetfull and slepishe drowsiness. Of the apples of mandrake, if a man smell of them thei will make hym slepe and also if they be eaten. But they that smell to muche of the apples become dum ... thys herbe diverse wayes taken is very jepardus for a man and may kill hym if he eat it or drynk it out of measure and have no remedy from it.... If mandragora be taken out of measure by and by slepe ensueth and a great lousing of the streyngthe with a forgetfulness."