Family Herbal - Electric Scotland

FAMILY HERBAL. 215
perly speaking, two kinds of mandrake ; the one
with round fruit, and broad leaves, called the male ;
the other with oblong fruit, and narrower leaves,
called the female : their virtues are the same, but the
male is generally preferred. They are natives ot
Italy, where they grow in woods, and on the banks of
rivers : we keep them in gardens ; but they grow
there as freely as if native.
The mandrake has no stalk. The leaves rise im-
mediately from the root, and they are very large :
they are a foot long, four inches broad in the middle,
and of a dusky green colour, and bad smell.
The flowers stand upon foot stalks, of four inches
high, slender, and hairy, and rising immediately
from the root : these flowers are large, of a dingy
purplish colour, and of a very bad smell. The
fruit which follows, is of the bigness and shape
of a small apple, or like a small pear, according
to the male or female kind : this is yellow when
ripe, and is also of a very bad smell. The root
is long and thick it is ; largest at the head, and
smaller all the way down sometimes it is ; divided
into two parts, from the middle downwards, if a
stone have lain in the way, or any other accident
occasioned it ; but usually it is single. This is
the root which is pictured to be like the human
form : it is when single, no more like a man than
a carrot or a parsnip is, and when by some accident
it is divided, 'tis no more tike, than any long
root, which happens to have met the same accident.
Those roots which are shewn about for
money and have the head, limbs, and figure, of
a human form, are made so by art, and they seldom
use the real mandrake root for that purpose :
they are often made of white briony root, sometime?
of angelica. The people cut them into
this shape, and put them into the ground again,