Leechdoms, wortcunning, and starcraft of early England. Being a ...

PREFACE.
'
xis
Malum Persicum, was from Persia ; there is no other
name for it but " the Persian apple/' For such as these
it was impossible to have any other name ; they were
fruit trees foreign to all but their own countrymen.
The plum is a better sloe ; can be raised only by grafting,
for seedlings are found to degenerate; which is
also the case with the pear, having its native equivalent
in the Pirus domestica, of Bewdley Forest. The sycamore,
which has been alleged to prove the Latinism
of the Saxons, is merely a maple. Yet the great
influence which a Latin education, and scarce any instruction
in old English, has upon ourselves, is traceable
even among the Saxons : the true signification of
some native names was passing away, and the plants
supposed once to have borne them began to be known
by some Roman denomination. For so common a plant
as mint, seen in every running ditch, on every watery
marge, there seems to be no name but that which is
Hellenic, and Latin. The Germanic races, on the contrary,
were the original patrons of hemp ' and flax,^
as against wool. It is, however, with their reach over
the material world, and their proficiency in the arts
which turn it to mans convenience, after, and not
before, their arrival in England, that we are now dealing
; and we maintain that a great part of what the
Roman could teach, the Saxons, their successors, had
learnt.
The most cursory examination of the work now Book learning,
before us will show that we are reading of a civilization
such as the above details would lead us to expect.
Here a leech calmly sits down to compose a
not unlearned book, treating of many serious diseases,
and assigning for them something he hopes will cure
them. In the Preface to the first volume it was ad-
* Vol. I. p. X. note.
^Feminae saepius lineis amictibus utuntur. Tacitus, Germ. 17.