f his called
Pantagruelion, not only of the green and raw sort of it, but of the
confected also, and of that which was notably well befitted for present use
after the fashion of conserves. The herb Pantagruelion hath a little root
somewhat hard and rough, roundish, terminating in an obtuse and very blunt
point, and having some of its veins, strings, or filaments coloured with
some spots of white, never fixeth itself into the ground above the
profoundness almost of a cubit, or foot and a half. From the root thereof
proceedeth the only stalk, orbicular, cane-like, green without, whitish
within, and hollow like the stem of smyrnium, olus atrum, beans, and
gentian, full of long threads, straight, easy to be broken, jagged,
snipped, nicked, and notched a little after the manner of pillars and
columns, slightly furrowed, chamfered, guttered, and channelled, and full
of fibres, or hairs like strings, in which consisteth the chief value and
dignity of the herb, especially in that part thereof which is termed mesa,
as he would say the mean, and in that other, which hath got the
denomination of milasea. Its height is commonly of five or six foot. Yet
sometimes it is of such a tall growth as doth surpass the length of a
lance, but that is only when it meeteth with a sweet, easy, warm, wet, and
well-soaked soil--as is the ground of the territory of Olone, and that of
Rasea, near to Preneste in Sabinia--and that it want not for rain enough
about the season of the fishers' holidays and the estival solstice. There
are many trees whose height is by it very far exceeded, and you might call
it dendromalache by the authority of Theophrastus. The plant every year
perisheth,--the tree neither in the trunk, root, bark, or boughs being
durable.

From the stalk of this Pantagruelian plant there issue forth several large
and great branches, whose leaves have thrice as much length as breadth,
always green, roughish, and rugged like the orcanet, or Spanish bugloss,
hardish, slit round about like unto a sickle, or as the saxifragum, betony,
and finally ending as it were in the points of a Macedonian spear, or of
such a lancet as surgeons commonly make use of in their phlebotomizing
tiltings. The figure and shape of the leaves thereof is not much different
from that of those of the ash-tree, or of agrimony; the herb itself being
so like the Eupatorian plant that many skilful herbalists have called it
the Domestic Eupator, and the Eupator the