he 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.

"1. Plantain--_plantago m