and drink a cup of the tea daily for three or
four days; it will act gently, painlessly, but thoroughly." The syrup
is especially useful for children.

Country people bury the Sloes in jars to preserve them for winter
use; and the bush which bears this fruit is sometimes called,
provincially, Scroggs.

Sloes may be gathered when ripe on a dry day, picked clean, and put
into jars or bottles, without any boiling or other process, and then
covered with loaf sugar; a tablespoonful of brandy should presently
be added, and the jar sealed. By Christmas, the syrup formed from
the juice, the sugar, and the spirit, will have covered and saturated
the fruit, and then a couple of tablespoonfuls will not only make an
agreeable dessert liqueur, but will act as an astringent cordial of a
very pleasant sort.

In Somersetshire the Sloe is named Snag (as corrupted from "Slag,"
i.e., Sloe). The juice is viscid, and when thickened to dryness, is the
German Gum Acacia.

Those provers who have taken experimentally a tincture made from
the wood and bark and leaves of the Blackthorn, all had to complain
of sharp pains in the right eyeball and accordingly the diluted
tincture is found, when administered in small quantities, to give
signal relief for ciliary neuralgia, arising from a functional disorder
of the structures within the eyeball. Dr. Hughes says: "It not only
relieves such pains, but also checks the inflammation, and clears the
vision." The medicinal tincture is made (H.) with proof spirit of
wine from the flower buds collected in early spring [520] before
they expand. The Sloe has been employed as a styptic ever since the
time of Dioscorides. "From the effects," says Withering, "which I
have repeatedly observed to follow a wound from the thorns, I find
reason for believing that there is something poisonous in their
nature, particularly in the autumn."

Next to the Sloe in order of development comes the Bullace
(_Prunus insititia_), a shrub with fewer thorns, and bearing its
flowers after the leaves have begun to unfold.

The fruit is five times as big as the Sloe, but likewise of a delicate
bluish colour. It is named from the Latin plural bullas, meaning the
round bosses which the Romans put on their bridles. Lydgate (1440)
used the phrase, "As bright as Bullaces," in one of his poems. In
Lincolnshire the blossom is known as "Bully bloom," and the fruit
are "Bullies." After harvest the women and children go out
gathering the