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