Note 198 — {41} Fifthly, Of Plants.

“Live-for-ever. It is a kind of cud-weed.... It growes now plentifully in our English gardens.... The fishermen, when they want” (that is, lack) “tobacco, take this herb; being cut and dryed.”—Voyages, p. 78; where the author adds the peculiar medicinal virtues of the plant, which are the same as those assigned by Gerard (p. 644) to the genus. Compare, as to this, Wood and Bache, Dispens., p. 1334. The species intended by Josselyn is our everlasting (Antennaria margaritacea (L.) Br.), described by Gerard, and figured by Johnson in his edition of the former (p. 641), and first published by Clusius (Gnaphalium Americanum, Rar. Pl. Hist., vol. i. p. 327) in 1601. Clusius had it from England, says Johnson. The dried herb, used by the fishermen instead of tobacco, and no doubt called by them poke, may have been mistaken by Wood for colt’s-foot, the leaves of which were “smoked by the ancients in pulmonary complaints; ... and, in some parts of Germany, are at the present time said to be substituted for tobacco.”—Wood and Bache, Dispens., p. 1401. Cornus sericea, L.,—“called by the natives squaw-bush” (Williamson’s Hist. Maine, vol. i. p. 125), and by the western Indians kinnikinnik (Gray, Man., p. 161); furnished, in its inner bark (on the medicinal properties of which, see especially Rees’s Cycl., Amer. ed., in loco), a substitute for Nicotiana,—very widely approved among the native Americans. The name, Indian tobacco, given to Lobelia inflata, L. (the emetic-weed of Cutler, l. c., p. 484; who “first attracted to it the attention of the profession”), by the whites, is in some connections confusing, and might well be displaced by wild tobacco, which is also in popular use.