Wallflower," adds Gerard,
"and the Stock Gilliflower are used by certain empiricks and quack
salvers about love and lust,--matters which for modesty I omit."

WALNUT.

The Walnut tree is known of aspect to most persons throughout
Great Britain as of stately handsome culture, having many spreading
branches covered with a silvery grey bark, which is smooth when
young, though thick and cracked when old.

The flowers occur in long, hanging, inconspicuous spikes or catkins,
of a brownish green colour.

This tree is a native of Asia Minor, but is largely grown in England.
The Greeks called it "Karuon," and the Latins "Nux." Its botanical
title is _Juglans regia_, a corruption of _glans_, the acorn, _jovis_,
of Jupiter, or the "royal nut of Jupiter," food fit for the Gods! Its
fruit is also named Ban nut, or Ball nut, and Welsh nut, or Walnut--
the word Wal, or Welsh, being Teutonic for "stranger." "As for the
timber," said Fuller, "it may be termed the English Shittim Wood."

[598] The London Society of Apothecaries has directed that the
unripe fruit of the Walnut should be used pharmaceutically on
account of its worm-destroying virtues.

It is remarkable that no insects will prey on the leaves of this tree.
In good seasons the produce of nuts is weighty enough to pay the rent
of the land occupied by the trees.

The vinegar of the pickled fruit makes a very useful gargle for sore
throats, even when slightly ulcerated: and the green husks, or early
buds of the blossom, being dried to powder, serve in some places
for pepper.

The kernel of the nut (or the part of the inside taken at dessert)
affords an oil which does not congeal by cold, and which painters
find very useful on such account.

This oil has proved useful when applied externally for troublesome
skin diseases of the leprous type. Indeed, the Walnut has been justly
termed vegetable arsenic, because of its curative virtues in eczema,
and other obstinately diseased conditions of the skin.

The tincture when made (H.) from the rind of the green fruit and the
fresh leaves, with spirit of wine, and given in material doses, will
determine in a sound person a burning itching eruption of the skin,
of an eczematous character, lasting a long time, and leaving the
parts which have been affected afterwards blue and swollen.
Reasoning from which it has been found that the tincture, in a
reduced form, and of a diminished strength, proves admirably
curative of ecze