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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Irene E. Jerome., In a fair country 2 0 Browse Search
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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Irene E. Jerome., In a fair country, Water-Lilies (search)
gment of our earliest vernacular has been borne down to us, so that here the school-boy is more learned than the philologists. This lets us down easily to the more familiar uses of this plant divine. By the Nile, in early days, the waterlily was good not merely for devotion, but for diet. From the seeds of the Lotus, said Pliny, the Egyptians make bread. The Hindoos still eat the seeds, roasted in sand; also the stalks and roots. In South America, from the seeds of the Victoria (Nymphaea Victoria, now Vicloria Regia) a farina is made, preferred to that of the finest wheat,— Bonpland even suggesting to our reluctant imagination Victoria-pies. But the European species are used, so far as is reported, only in dyeing, and as food (if the truth be told) of swine. Our own water-lily is rather more powerful in its uses; the root contains tannin and gallic acid, and a decoction of it gives a black precipitate, with sulphate of iron. It graciously consents to become an astringent and