“I had
  No medicine, sir, to go invisible,
  No fern-seed in my pocket.”

Brand [11] was told by an inhabitant of Heston, in Middlesex, that when he was a young man he was often present at the ceremony of catching the fern-seed at midnight, on the eve of St. John Baptist.  The attempt was frequently unsuccessful, for the seed was to fall into a plate of its own accord, and that too without shaking the plate.  It is unnecessary to add further illustrations on this point, as we have had occasion to speak elsewhere of the sundry other magical properties ascribed to the fern-seed, whereby it has been prominently classed amongst the mystic plants.  But, apart from the doctrine of signatures, it would seem that the fern-seed was also supposed to derive its power of making invisible from the cloud, says Mr. Kelly, [12] “that contained the heavenly fire from which the plant is sprung.”  Whilst speaking, too, of the fern-seed’s property of making people invisible, it is of interest to note that in the Icelandic and Pomeranian myths the schamir or “raven-stone” renders its possessor invisible; and according to a North German tradition the luck-flower is enbued with the same wonderful qualities.  It is essential, however, that the flower be found by accident, for he who seeks it never finds it.  In Sweden hazel-nuts are reputed to have the power of making invisible, and from their reputed magical properties have been, from time immemorial, in great demand for divination.  All those plants whose leaves bore a fancied resemblance to the moon were, in days of old, regarded with superstitious reverence.  The moon-daisy, the type of a class of plants resembling the pictures of a full moon, were exhibited, says Dr. Prior, “in uterine complaints, and dedicated in pagan times to the goddess of the moon.”  The moonwort (Botrychium lunaria), often confounded with the common “honesty” (Lunaria biennis) of our gardens, so called from the semi-lunar shape of the segments of its frond, was credited with the most curious properties, the old alchemists affirming that it was good among other things for converting quicksilver into pure silver, and unshoeing such horses as trod upon it.  A similar virtue was ascribed to the horse-shoe vetch (Hippocrepis comosa), so called from the shape of the legumes, hence another of its mystic nicknames was “unshoe the horse.”

But referring to the doctrine of signatures in folk-medicine, a favourite garden flower is Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum multiflorum).  On cutting the roots transversely, some marks are apparent not unlike the characters of a seal, which to the old herbalists indicated its use as a seal for wounds. [13] Gerarde, describing it, tells us how, “the root of Solomon’s seal stamped, while it is fresh and greene, and applied, taketh away in one night, or two at the most, any bruise, black or blue spots, gotten by falls, or women’s wilfulness in stumbling