Page 74, line 25. "The laughter-plant."--"The _Illyrium Crow-foot_,"
says Thomas Johnson, in his "History of Plants," p. 953, "in Greek, may
be that kind of crow-foot called _Apium risus_, and [Greek: gelotophuê]
[laughter-producing]; and this is thought to be that _Gelotophyllis_ of
which Pliny maketh mention in his 24th Booke, 17th chapter, which being
drunke, saith he, with wine and myrrhe, causeth a man to see divers
strange sights, and not to cease laughing till he hath drunk Pineapple
kernels with pepper in wine of the Date-tree (I think he would have
said untill he be dead), because the nature of laughing Crow-foot is to
kill laughing, but without doubt the thing is clean contrary; for it
causeth such convulsions, cramps, and wringings of the mouth and jaws,
that it hath seemed to some that the parties died laughing, whereas in
truth they have died in great torment."
Page 487, line 20.--Hemsterhuis, a Dutch critic and philologist, of
remarkable precocity, was born in Groningen in 1685, entered the
University at fourteen, and at nineteen became Professor of Mathematics
and Philosophy at Amsterdam. He died at Leyden in 1766.
Page 499, line 29.--Saint Alban is said to have been the first martyr
for Christianity in Britain. He renounced Paganism in Rome, and
suffered martyrdom during the persecutions under Dioclesian. A
monastery was built in his memory, and around it grew up the town of
St. Alban's.
Page 500, line 1.--Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, founded the order
of _el toysón de oro_, on occasion of his marriage with the Princess
Isabella of Portugal, January 10, 1430.
Page 508, line 4.--Nicholas Jerome Gundling, a learned and in his day
noted professor of law and eloquence, was born near Nuremberg, and died
in 1729 at Halle, where he had been Rector of the University. He left
many works, among them "Otia, or a Collection of Discourses on
Physical, Moral, Political, and Historical Topics," in 3 vols., 8vo.