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country as a delicacy. He dispersed the breed about Gothurst, his seat, near Newport Pagnel: but the merit of first importing it is due to Charles Howard, of the Arundel family. The fashion seems to have taken, for that grateful and great master cook, Robert May, has left several receipts for dressing snails among the secrets of his fifty years experience.

Snails are still sold in Covent Garden as a remedy for consumptive people. I remember, when a child, having seen them pricked through the shell to obtain a liquor for this purpose, but the liquor was as inefficacious as the means to obtain it were cruel. They were at that time, I know, eaten by the men who worked at the glass houses, probably from some notion of their restorative virtue.

Shell snails of every kind are rarely found in Cumberland; the large brown species I have never seen there. The snail is so slow a traveller that it will.

probably require many centuries before he makes the tour of the island.

198. Spectral Flowers.

When Christina of Sweden visited the Propaganda College, Kircher prepared many curious and remarkable things for her inspection. "She stayed some time to consider the herb called Phoenix, which resembling the Phoenix, grew up in the waters perpetually out of its own ashes. She saw the fountains and clocks, which by virtue of the loadstone turn about with secret force. She saw the preparation of the ingredients of herbs, plants, metals, gems, and other rare things for the making of treacle and balsome of life. She saw them distil with the fire of the same furnace sixty five sorts of herbs in as many distinct limbecks. She saw the philosophical calcination of ivory and the like. She saw extracted the spirits of vitriol, salt, and aqua fortis, as likewise a jarre of

pure water, which with only two single drops of the quintessence of milk was turned into true milk, the only medicine for shortness of the breath and affections of the breast."

Presently it is added, that "she honoured particularly the blood of St. Esuperantia, a virgin and martyr, which after a thousand and three hundred years is as liquid as if newly shed.

Priorato's History of Christina.
Engl. Trans. p. 430.

This passage affords a curious instance of Christina's superstition, and a curious display of the quackeries practised under the sanction of so celebrated and so learned a man as Kircher. What the herb Phoenix may be I know not; its peculiar name and its growing in water seem to show that the trick of the resurrection of plants is not meant.

How this remarkable trick was performed I have never seen explained. It is thus described by Gaffarel, in a book

containing a most curious mixture of superstitious notions and good sense.

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Though plants," he says," be chopt in pieces, brayed in a mortar, and even burnt to ashes; yet do they nevertheless retaine, by a certaine secret and wonderfull power of nature, both in the juyce and in the ashes the selfe same forme and figure that they had before and though it be not there visible, yet it may by art be drawne forth and made visible to the eye, by an artist. This perhaps will seem a ridiculous story to those who reade only the titles of bookes; but those that please may see this truth confirmed if they but have recourse to the workes of Mr. Du Chesne, S. de la Violette, one of the best chymists that our age hath produced, who affirmes, that himselfe saw an excellent Polish physician of Cracovia, who kept in glasses the ashes of almost all the hearbes that are knowne: so that, when any one out of curiosity, had a desire to see any of them, as for

example, a rose, in one of his glasses, he tooke that where the ashes of a rose were preserved; and holding it over a lighted candle, so soon as ever it began to feele the heat, you should presently see the ashes begin to move; which afterwards issuing up, and dispersing themselves about the glasse, you should immediately observe a kind of little dark cloud d; which dividing itself into many parts, it came at length to represent a rose; but so faire, so fresh, and so perfect a one, that you would have thought it to have been as substantial, and as odoriferous a rose as any that growes on the rose tree. This learned gentleman sayes, that himself hath often tryed to do the like: but not finding the successe to answer all the industry hee could use, Fortune at length gave him a sight of this prodigy. For as he was one day practising, with M. De Luynes, called otherwise De Fomentieres, Counseller to the Parliament, having extracted the salt of certaine

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