11. Of which accuracy, the reader may observe for immediate instance, my
extrication for him, from among the uvularias, of these five species of the
Butterwort; which, being all that need be distinctly named and remembered,
_do_ need to be first carefully distinguished, and then remembered in their
companionship. So alike are they, that Gerarde makes no distinction among
them; but masses them under the general type of the frequent English one,
described as the second kind of his promiscuous group of 'Sanicle,' "which
Clusius calleth Pinguicula; not before his time remembered, hath sundry
small thick leaves, fat and full of juice, being broad towards the root and
sharp towards the point, of a faint green colour, and bitter in taste; out
of the middest whereof sprouteth or shooteth up a naked slender stalke nine
inches long, every stalke bearing one flower and no more, sometimes white,
and sometimes of a bluish purple colour, fashioned like unto the common
Monkshoods" (he means Larkspurs) "called Consolida Regalis, having the like
spur or Lark's heel attached thereto." Then after describing a third kind
of Sanicle--(Cortusa Mathioli, a large-leaved Alpine Primula,) he goes on:
"These plants are strangers in England; their natural country is the alpish
mountains of Helvetia. They grow in my garden, where they flourish
exceedingly, except Butterwoort, which groweth in our English _squally_ wet
grounds,"--('Squally,' I believe, here, from squalidus, though Johnson does
not give this sense; but one of his quotations from Ben Jonson touches it
nearly: "Take heed that their new flowers and sweetness do not as much
corrupt as the others' dryness and squalor,"--and note farther that the
word 'squal,' in the sense of gust, is not pure English, but the Arabic
'Chuaul' with an s prefixed:--the English word, a form of 'squeal,' meaning
a child's cry, from Gothic 'Squaela' and Icelandic 'squilla,' would scarcely
have been made an adjective by Gerarde),--"and will not yield to any
culturing or transplanting: it groweth especially in a field called Cragge
Close, and at Crosbie Ravenswaithe, in Westmerland; (West-_mere_-land you
observe, not mor) upon Ingleborough Fells, twelve miles from Lancaster, and
by Harwoode in the same county near to Blackburn: ten miles from Preston,
in Anderness, upon the bogs and marish ground, and in the boggie meadows
about Bishop's-Hatfield, and also in the fens in the way to Wittles Meare"
(Roger Wildrake's Squattlesea Mere?) "from Fendon, in Huntingdonshire.
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