der or decoction,
helps to stay bloody fluxes and purgings. The flowers are sometimes
of a blood-red hue, and the whole plant contains a special essential
oil.

"Whoso taketh," says Parkinson, "but one scruple of _Gratiola_
(Hedge Hyssop) bruised, shall perceive evidently his effectual
operation and virtue in purging mightily, and that in great
abundance, watery, gross, and slimy tumours." _Caveat qui
sumpserit_. On the principle of affinities, small diluted doses of the
tincture, or decoction, or of the dried leaves, prove curative in cases
of fluxes from the lower bowels, where irritation within the
fundament is frequent, and where there is considerable nervous
exhaustion, especially in chronic cases of this sort.

IVY, Common (_Araliaceoe_).

The clergyman of fiction in the sixth chapter of Dickens' memorable
_Pickwick_, sings certain verses which he styles "indifferent" (the
only verse, by the way, to be found in all that great writer's
stories), and which relate to the Ivy, beginning thus:--

"Oh! a dainty plant is the Ivy green,
That creepeth o'er ruins old."

The well known common Ivy (_Hedera helix_), which clothes the
trunks of trees and the walls of old buildings so picturesquely
throughout Great Britain, gets its botanical name most probably
from the Celtic word _hoedra _[281] "a cord," or from the Greek
_hedra_ "a seat," because sitting close, and its vernacular title from
_iw_ "green," which is also the parent of "yew." In Latin it is termed
_abiga_, easily corrupted to "iva"; and the Danes knew it as
Winter-grunt, or Winter-green, to which appellation it may still lay a
rightful claim, being so conspicuously green at the coldest times of
the year when trees are of themselves bare and brown.

By the ancients the Ivy was dedicated to Bacchus, whose statues
were crowned with a wreath of the plant, under the name Kissos,
and whose worshippers decorated themselves with its garlands. The
leaves have a peculiar faintly nauseous odour, whilst they are
somewhat bitter, and rough of taste. The fresh berries are rather
acid, and become bitter when dried. They are much eaten by our
woodland birds in the spring.

A crown of Ivy was likewise given to the classic poets of
distinction, and the Greek priests presented a wreath of the same to
newly married persons. The custom of decorating houses and
churches with Ivy at Christmastide, was forbidden by one of the
early councils on account of its Pagan