[2] for Aubrey mentions an old belief that if a plant “be not gathered according to the rules of astrology, it hath little or no virtue in it.”  Hence, in accordance with this notion, we find numerous directions for the cutting and preparing of certain plants for medicinal purposes, a curious list of which occurs in Culpepper’s “British Herbal and Family Physician.”  This old herbalist, who was a strong believer in astrology, tells us that such as are of this way of thinking, and none else, are fit to be physicians.  But he was not the only one who had strict views on this matter, as the literature of his day proves—­astrology, too, having held a prominent place in most of the gardening books of the same period.  Michael Drayton, who has chronicled so many of the credulities of his time, referring to the longevity of antediluvian men, writes:—­

 “Besides, in medicine, simples had the power
 That none need then the planetary hour
 To help their workinge, they so juiceful were.”

The adder’s-tongue, if plucked during the wane of the moon, was a cure for tumours, and there is a Swabian belief that one, “who on Friday of the full moon pulls up the amaranth by the root, and folding it in a white cloth, wears it against his naked breast, will be made bullet-proof.” [3] Consumptive patients, in olden times, were three times passed, “Through a circular wreath of woodbine, cut during the increase of the March moon, and let down over the body from head to foot.” [4] In France, too, at the present day, the vervain is gathered under the different changes of the moon, with secret incantations, after which it is said to possess remarkable curative properties.

In Cornwall, the club-moss, if properly gathered, is considered “good against all diseases of the eye.”  The mode of procedure is this:—­“On the third day of the moon, when the thin crescent is seen for the first time, show it the knife with which the moss is to be cut, and repeat this formula:—­

  ’As Christ healed the issue of blood,
   Do thou cut what thou cuttest for good.’

At sundown, the operator, after carefully washing his hands, is to cut the club-moss kneeling.  It is then to be wrapped in a white cloth, and subsequently boiled in water taken from the spring nearest to its place of growth.  This may be used as a fomentation, or the club-moss may be made into an ointment with the butter from the milk of a new cow.” [5]

Some plants have, from time immemorial, been much in request from the season or period of their blooming, beyond which fact it is difficult to account for the virtues ascribed to them.  Thus, among the Romans, the first anemone of the year, when gathered with this form of incantation, “I gather thee for a remedy against disease,” was regarded as a preservative from fever; a survival of which belief still prevails in our own country:—­

  “The first spring-blown anemone she in his doublet wove,
  To keep him safe from pestilence wherever he should rove.”