llied nervous disorders, that
the flowers and leaves of the Lime or Linden Tree occupy a true
place among modern medicinal Simples. Gilbert White made some
Lime-blossom tea, and pronounced it a very soft, well-flavoured,
pleasant saccharine julep, much resembling the juice of liquorice.
This tea has been found efficacious for quieting hard coughs and for
relieving hoarseness.

The flowers easily ferment, and being so fragrant may be used for
making wine: likewise a fine flavoured brandy has been distilled
from them. The fruit contains an oily substance, and has been
proposed, when roasted, as a domestic substitute for chocolate. The
sap may be procured by making incisions in the trunk, and branches.
The flowers are sedative, and anti-spasmodic. Fenelon decorates his
enchanted Isle of Calypso with flowering Lime trees. Hoffman says
_Tilioe ad mille usus petendoe_.

The inner bark furnishes a soft mucilage, which may be applied
externally with healing effect to burns, scalds, and inflammatory
swellings. Gerard taught, "that the flowers are commended by divers
persons against pain of the head proceeding from a cold cause;
against dizziness, apoplexy, and the falling sickness; and not only
the flowers, but the distilled water thereof." [318] Hoffman knew a
case of chronic epilepsy recovered by a use of the flowers in infusion
drunk as tea. Such, indeed, was the former exalted anti-epileptic
reputation of the Lime Tree, that epileptic persons sitting
under its shade were reported to be cured.

A famous "Lind" or Lime Tree, which grew in his ancestral place,
gave to the celebrated Linnaeus his significant name. The well-known
street, _unter den Linden_ in Berlin, is a favourite resort,
because of its pleasant, balmy shade; and when Heine lay beneath
the Lindens, he "thought his own sweet nothing-at-all thoughts."
The wood of the Lime Tree is preferred before every other wood fur
masterly carving. Grinling Gibbons executed his best and most
noted work in this material; and the finely-cut details still remain
sharp, delicate, and beautiful.

Chemically, the Linden flowers contain a particular light, fragrant,
volatile oil, which is soluble in alcohol. They are used in warm
baths with much success to allay nervous irritability; or a strong
infusion of them is administered by enema for the same purpose.

LIQUORICE, English (_Leguminous_).

The common Liquorice plant, a native of the warmer European
countries, was fir