42 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
As for our wayside flowers these have been systematically
persecuted by the. Essex County Council, the authority res-
ponsible for the education of the young. It was bad enough in
peace-time to see thousands of pounds being squandered in
maintaining gangs of active men with petrol-mowers to chop
down the pretty Sheep's-parsley and Cow-mumble beside our
country roads. In war time it is shocking, but the gangs are
still there. By them some healthy stations of Tansy have now
been slaughtered and some of Dyer's Rocket, which dearly loves
the chalk cast out from the water-softening plant of Courtauld's
Mill. Where is Lathyrus Nissolia? Where are Dipsacus pilosus
and Chrysosplenium oppositifolium, the Golden Saxifrage which
broke no rock but peered up humbly from her muddy ditch near
Rayne? I knew a bank whereon the Wild Sage grew, but she
grows there no more because her bank has been submerged
beneath the roaring traffic of the Roman Stane Street.
The subject of roadside flowers has been charmingly dealt
with in The Wayfarers' Garden, being Chaper XII of These for
Remembrance, by Miss E. Vaughan.
Bonus Henricus is another philosopher who has shaken the
dust of our village from off his goose-feet, but he was ever more
quaint than beauteous. Gibson dubs him "Mercury Goosefoot,"
and Johns says that his leaves are used as spinach, and that the
plant is cultivated in Lincolnshire under the name of "Mercury."
Bentham crowns him with the title of Good King Henry. There
are others who call him Good King Harry and tell baseless stories
of his having cured the Bluff Monarch of his gout. Away with
such idle fancies ! Bonus won his reputation for goodness as a
vulnerary or healer of wounds, not as a dispeller of uric acid.
He was labelled guter Heinrich by the Bavarian botanist, Leonard
Fuchs, whose History of Plants was published in 1543 but
compiled before our Bluebeard's matrimonial and other excesses
had produced the trouble in his feet: and in opposition to him
was boser Heinrich (wicked Henry) otherwise Dog's Mercury,
apparently from some resemblance in their spikes of green flowers.
Fuchs includes Bonus in his chapter on Lapathum or Dock, of
which he gives four kinds, this being the third. The Grimms
explain these names as having reference to elves and kobolds,
which are called Heintz and Heinrich, and as indicating super-