156 FILICES 
than they, both for inward and outward griefs, and is accounted good in 
wounds, bruises, or the like. The decoction to be drunk, or boiled into an 
ointment of oil asa balsam or balm, and so it is singular good against bruises, 
and bones broken or out of joint.” The root, when boiled, is very slimy, 
and is used in the north of Europe for stiffening linen. 
Sub-order TV. OPHIOGLOSSACE. 
18. Moonwort (Botrjchium). 
1. Common Moonwort (B. lwndria).—Frond pinnate ; pinne crescent- 
shaped or fan-shaped. It is on the dry open moor, amongst heather and 
heath-bells, that we must look for the Moonwort, which, though not a 
common plant, is more or less distributed throughout the United Kingdom. 
In England it seems to occur most frequently in the counties of Staffordshire, 
Surrey, and Yorkshire ; generally on old pasture-lands or heathy places: but 
it has occasionally been gathered in a wood. Like the royal fern, its 
habit differs much from that of ferns in general, and it is well named Moon- 
wort, from the usually crescent-shaped leafy pinne. Doubtless this form 
induced the old alchemists and professors of magic to value it so highly, for 
moon-shaped plants, or parts of plants, were readily believed to indicate some 
wondrous potency. And several old poets refer to it :— 
‘* And I ha’ been plucking plants among 
Hemlock, henbane, adder’s tongue ; 
Nightshade, Moonwort, Ibbard’s-bane, 
And twice by the dogs was like to be ta’en.” 
Many of our oldest writers on plants had most firm assurance of strange 
powers possessed by this fern: thus Cole remarks—‘“‘It is said, yea, and 
believed, by many, that Moonwort will open the locks wherewith dwelling- 
houses are made fast, if it be put into the keyhole; as, also, that it will 
loosen the locks, fetters, and shoes from those horses’ feet that goe on the 
places where it groweth ; and of this opinion was Master Culpeper, who, 
though he railed against superstition in others, yet had enough of it himself, 
as may appear by his story of the Earl of Essex his horses, which being 
drawne up in a body, many of them lost their shoes upon White Down 
in Devonshire, neer Tiverton, because Moonwort grows upon the heaths.” 
George Wither, writing 1622, says— 
‘There is an herb, some say, whose vertue’s such 
It in the pasture, only with a touch, 
Unshoes the new-shod steed.” 
There were herbalists, however, even in those credulous times, who 
denounced this belief ; as did Turner, who published his “ British Physician ” 
in 1687, and who says, that the plant is neither smith, farrier, nor picklock ; 
yet even he prizes the fern for its medicinal virtues, and declares himself 
confident that it is the moon’s herb. Gerarde mentions the use of this fern 
by the alchemists, who, he says, called it Martagon. It appears to have 
entered into some of those compositions over which so many men spent 
their nights and days in fruitless labour and frequent disappointment. It 
may be, however, that now and then some unexpected good resulted from 
