hes that a teaspoonful of the bruised seeds if boiled in
water and taken hot with bread soaked therein, wonderfully helps
such as are languishing from hardened excrements, even though
they may have vomited up their faeces.

The plant is largely grown in the East Indies, where is known as
_Soyah_. Its fruit and leaves are used for flavouring pickles, and
its water is given to parturient women.

Drayton speaks of the Dill as a magic ingredient in Love potions;
and the weird gipsy, Meg Merrilies, crooned a cradle song at the
birth of Harry Bertram in it was said:--

"Trefoil, vervain, John's wort, _Dill_,
Hinder witches of their will."

DOCK.

The term Dock is botanically a noun of multitude, meaning originally
a bundle of hemp, and corresponding to a similar word signifying a
flock. It became in early times applied to a wide-spread tribe of
broad-leaved wayside weeds. They all belong to the botanical order
of _Polygonaceoe_, or "many kneed" plants, because, like the wife
of Yankee Doodle, famous in song, they are "double-jointed;"
though he, poor man! expecting to find Mistress Doodle doubly
active in her household [158] duties, was, as the rhyme says,
"disappointed." The name "Dock" was first applied to the _Arctium
Lappa_, or Bur-dock, so called because of its seed-vessels
becoming frequently entangled by their small hooked spines
in the wool of sheep passing along by the hedge-rows. Then
the title got to include other broad-leaved herbs, all of the Sorrel
kind, and used in pottage, or in medicine.

Of the Docks which are here recognized, some are cultivated, such
as Garden Rhubarb, and the Monk's Rhubarb, or herb Patience, an
excellent pot herb; whilst others grow wild in meadows, and by
river sides, such as the round-leafed Dock (_Rumex obtusifolius_),
the sharp-pointed Dock (_Rumex acutus_), the sour Dock (_Rumex
acetosus_), the great water Dock (_Rumex hydrolapathum_),
and the bloody-veined Dock (_Rumex sanguineus_).

All these resemble our garden rhubarb more or less in their general
characteristics, and in possessing much tannin. Most of them
chemically furnish "rumicin," or crysophanic acid, which is highly
useful in several chronic diseases of the skin among scrofulous
patients. The generic name of several Docks is _rumex_, from the
Hebrew _rumach_, a "spear"; others arc called _lapathum_, from
the Greek verb _lapazein_, to cleanse, because they act medicinally
as purgatives.

The common