Domestic Encyclopædia (1802)/Duck's-meat

DUCK's-MEAT, or Lemna, L. a genus of plants, consisting of four species, all of which are natives of this country, and grow abundantly in ponds, ditches, and stagnant waters. They are in flower from June to September, and afford a grateful food to ducks and geese, from which circumstance this vegetable has received its name.

In Germany, it is, on account of its various economical uses, often cultivated, by removing the whole plant in pails, and putting it in stagnant waters.—When mingled with bran, it affords excellent food for geese and other poultry. In Thuringia, hogs are reared and fattened with a mixture of duck's-meat, bran, and ground barley. But the most profitable employment of this vegetable, we learn from Bechstein, who informs us, that "from these apparently useless fibrous roots, a yarn may be spun, which is equal to that obtained from flax."

Duck's-meat is of a cooling, emollient nature, and has therefore been applied to inflammations, erysipelas, or the shingles; and also to the gout, either alone or mixed with barley-meal. Country people sometimes employ it for removing the jaundice: hence they infuse it in white wine, to the quantity ot six ounces, to be taken nine days successively, at the end of which period, it is said to have effected a cure.