[Prometheus, l. 369.  The antient story of Prometheus, who concealed in his bosom the fire he had stolen, and afterwards had a vulture perpetually gnawing his liver, affords so apt an allegory for the effects of drinking spirituous liquors, that one should be induced to think the art of distillation, as well as some other chemical processes (such as calcining gold), had been known in times of great antiquity, and lost again.  The swallowing drams cannot be better represented in hieroglyphic language than by taking fire into one’s bosom; and certain it is, that the general effect of drinking fermented or spirituous liquors is an inflamed, schirrous, or paralytic liver, with its various critical or consequential diseases, as leprous eruptions on the face, gout, dropsy, epilepsy, insanity.  It is remarkable, that all the diseases from drinking spirituous or fermented liquors are liable to become hereditary, even to the third generation; gradually increasing, if the cause be continued, till the family becomes extinct.]

        The gentle CYCLAMEN with dewy eye
380 Breathes o’er her lifeless babe the parting sigh;
        And, bending low to earth, with pious hands
        Inhumes her dear Departed in the sands. 
        “Sweet Nursling! withering in thy tender hour,
        “Oh, sleep,” She cries, “and rise a fairer flower!”
385 —­So when the Plague o’er London’s gasping crowds
        Shook her dank wing, and steer’d her murky clouds;
        When o’er the friendless bier no rites were read,
        No dirge slow-chanted, and no pall out-spread;
        While Death and Night piled up the naked throng,
390 And Silence drove their ebon cars along;
        Six lovely daughters, and their father, swept
        To the throng’d grave CLEONE saw, and wept;

[Cyclamen. 1. 379.  Shew-bread, or Sow-bread.  When the seeds are ripe, the stalk of the flower gradually twists itself spirally downwards, till it touches the ground, and forcibly penetrating the earth lodges its seeds; which are thought to receive nourishment from the parent root, as they are said not to be made to grow in any other situation.

The Trifolium subterraneum, subterraneous trefoil, is another plant, which buries its seed, the globular head of the seed penetrating the earth; which, however, in this plant may be only an attempt to conceal its seeds from the ravages of birds; for there is another trefoil, the trifolium globosum, or globular woolly-headed trefoil, which has a curious manner of concealing its seeds; the lower florets only have corols and are fertile; the upper ones wither into a kind of wool, and, forming a bead, completely conceal the fertile calyxes.  Lin.  Spec.  Plant, a Reichard.]