Once more, there is scorpion-grass and scorpion-wort, both of which refer to various species of Myosotis; snakes and vipers also adding to the list.  Thus there is viper’s-bugloss, and snake-weed.  In Gloucestershire the fruit of the Arum maculatum is snake’s-victuals, and snake’s-head is a common name for thefritillary.  There is the snake-skin willow and snake’s-girdles;—­snake’s-tongue being a name given to the bane-wort (Ranunculus flammula).

Names in which the devil figures have been noticed elsewhere, as also those in which the words fairy and witch enter.  As the authors, too, of the “Dictionary of Plant Names” have pointed out, a great number of names may be called dedicatory, and embody the names of many of the saints, and even of the Deity.  The latter, however, are very few in number, owing perhaps to a sense of reverence, and “God Almighty’s bread and cheese,” “God’s eye,” “God’s grace,” “God’s meat,” “Our Lord’s, or Our Saviour’s flannel,” “Christ’s hair,” “Christ’s herb,” “Christ’s ladder,” “Christ’s thorn,” “Holy Ghost,” and “Herb-Trinity,” make up almost the whole list.  On the other hand, the Virgin Mary has suggested numerous names, some of which we have noticed in the chapter on sacred plants.  Certain of the saints, again, have perpetuated their names in our plant nomenclature, instances of which are scattered throughout the present volume.

Some plants, such as flea-bane and wolf’s-bane, refer to the reputed property of the plant to keep off or injure the animal named,[5] and there is a long list of plants which derived their names from their real or imaginary medicinal virtues, many of which illustrate the old doctrine of signatures.

Birds, again, like animals, have suggested various names, and among some of the best-known ones may be mentioned the goose-foot, goose-grass, goose-tongue.  Shakespeare speaks of cuckoo-buds, and there is cuckoo’s-head, cuckoo-flower, and cuckoo-fruit, besides the stork’s-bill and crane’s-bill.  Bees are not without their contingent of names; a popular name of the Delphinium grandiflorum being the bee-larkspur, “from the resemblance of the petals, which are studded with yellow hairs, to the humble-bee whose head is buried in the recesses of the flower.”  There is the bee-flower (Ophrys apifera), because the, “lip is in form and colour so like a bee, that any one unacquainted therewith would take it for a living bee sucking of the flower.”

In addition to the various classes of names already mentioned, there are a rich and very varied assortment found in most counties throughout the country, many of which have originated in the most amusing and eccentric way.  Thus “butter and eggs” and “eggs and bacon” are applied to several plants, from the two shades of yellow in the flower, and butter-churn to the Nuphar luteum, from the shape of the fruit.  A popular term for Nepeta glechoma is “hen and chickens,” and “cocks