that he was a kind of mole; that he who found him was obliged to give him food—­bread, meat, and some other nourishment; and that he who had once given him food was obliged to give it every day, and in the same quantity, without which the mandrake would assuredly cause the forgetful one to die.  Two of his countrymen, whom he named to me, had, he said, lost their lives; but, as a recompense, this main de gloire returned on the morrow double what he had received the previous day.  If one paid cash for the main de gloire’s food one day, he would find double the amount the following, and so with anything else.  A certain countryman, whom he mentioned as still living, and who had become very rich, was believed to have owed his wealth to the fact that he had found one of these mains de gloire.”  Many other equally curious stories are told of the mandrake, a plant which, for its mystic qualities, has perhaps been unsurpassed; and it is no wonder that it was a dread object of superstitious fear, for Moore, speaking of its appearance, says:—­

  “Such rank and deadly lustre dwells,
  As in those hellish fires that light
  The mandrake’s charnel leaves at night.”

But these mandrake fables are mostly of foreign extraction and of very ancient date.  Dr. Daubeny, in his “Roman Husbandry,” has given a curious drawing from the Vienna MS. of Dioscorides in the fifth century, representing the Goddess of Discovery presenting to Dioscorides the root of the mandrake (of thoroughly human shape), which she has just pulled up, while the unfortunate dog which had been employed for that purpose is depicted in the agonies of death.

Basil, writes Lord Bacon in his “Natural History,” if exposed too much to the sun, changes into wild thyme; and a Bavarian piece of folk-lore tells us that the person who, during an eclipse of the sun, throws an offering of palm with crumbs on the fire, will never be harmed by the sun.  In Hesse, it is affirmed that with knots tied in willow one may slay a distant enemy; and according to a belief current in Iceland, the Caltha palustris, if taken with certain ceremonies and carried about, will prevent the bearer from having an angry word spoken to him.  The virtues of the dittany were famous as far back as Plutarch’s time, and Gerarde speaks of its marvellous efficacy in drawing forth splinters of wood, &c., and in the healing of wounds, especially those “made with envenomed weapons, arrows shot out of guns, and such like.”

Then there is the old tradition to the effect that if boughs of oak be put into the earth, they will bring forth wild vines; and among the supernatural qualities of the holly recorded by Pliny, we are told that its flowers cause water to freeze, that it repels lightning, and that if a staff of its wood be thrown at any animal, even if it fall short of touching it, the animal will be so subdued by its influence as to return and lie down by it.  Speaking, too, of