The Natural History of Wiltshire eBook

John Aubrey
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 257 pages of information about The Natural History of Wiltshire.

The Natural History of Wiltshire eBook

John Aubrey
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 257 pages of information about The Natural History of Wiltshire.
mix it with water and putt it on the haire.  Grind a very little of alkohol, which they use in glazeing of their earthen vessels, in a mortar with the takout, and this turnes the haire to a perfect black.  This receipt I had from my worthy and obligeing friend Mr. Wyld Clarke, merchant, of London, who was factour many yeares at S{an}cta-Cruce, in Barberie, and brought over a quantity of these leaves for his own use and his friends.  ’Tis pity it is not more known.  ’Tis leaves of a tree like a berbery leafe.  Mr. Clarke hath yet by him (1690) above half a peck of the alhanna.

Dr. Edw.  Brown, M.D. in his Travells, sc. description of Larissa and Thessalie, speakes of alhanna.  Mr. Wyld Clarke assures me that juice of lemons mixt with alhanna strikes a deeper and more durable colour either in the hands or nailes.
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Tobacco. — We have it onely in gardens for medicine; but in the neighbouring county of Gloucester it is a great commodity.  Mdm.  “Tobacco was first brought into England by Ralph Lane in the eight and twentieth yeare of Queen Elizabeth’s raigne”. — Sir Richard Baker’s Chronicle.  Rider’s Almanack (1682) sayes since tobacco was first brought into England by Sir Walter Raleigh, 99 yeares.  Mr. Michael Weekes, of the custome house, assures me that the custom of tobacco is the greatest of all other, and amounts now (1688) to four hundred thousand pounds per annum. [Now (1847) about three millions and a half.- J. B.]
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Broome keeps sheep from the rott, and is a medicine not long since found out by physitians for the dropsy.  In some places I knew carefull husbandmen that quite destroyed their broome (as at Lanford), and afterwards their sheep died of the rott, from which they were free before the broom was cutt down; so ever since they doe leave a border of broome about their grounds for their sheep to browze on, to keep them sound.
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Furzes (genista spinosa).-I never saw taller or more flourishing English furzes than at Chalke.  The Great Duke of Thuscany carried furzes out of England for a rarity in his magnificent garden.  I never saw such dwarft furzes as at Bowdon parke; they did but just peep above the ground.
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Oakes (the best of trees).-We had great plenty before the disafforestations.  We had in North Wiltshire, and yet have, though not in the former plenty, as good oakes as any in England.  The best that we have now (1670) are at Okesey Parke, Sir Edward Poole’s, in Malmesbury hundred; and the oakes at Easton Piers (once mine) were, for the number, not inferior to them.  In my great-grandfather Lite’s time (15—­) one might have driv’n a plough over every oake in the oak-close, which are now grown stately trees.  The great oake by the day-house [dairy house — J. B.] is the biggest oake now, I believe, in all the countie.  There is a common

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The Natural History of Wiltshire from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.