244 LILIACE^ 



2. Common Solomon's Seal {F. multiflonm). — Leaves egg-shaped, 

 oblong, half-clasping, smooth and alternate ; stalks one or many flowered : 

 stem rounded ; rootstock creeping. This Solomon's Seal, though truly wild 

 in several parts of England, is quite a rare woodland plant. Its arching stem 

 is about two feet high, and its bright glossy green leaves are very con- 

 spicuously marked with nerves, and take an opposite direction from that of 

 the large nodding waxen-white flowers, tipped with green. It blossoms in 

 May and June, and the flowers give place to blue-black berries about one- 

 third of an inch in diameter. 



This is still a favourite garden-flower ; but it has lost much of its old 

 repute as a wondrous healing herb. On the rootstock there are circular 

 marks having a resemblance to the characters of a seal, but really indicating 

 where the stems of former years have been thrown oft' in autumn. These to 

 the old herbalists were an indication of its uses ; it was destined to seal or 

 consolidate wounds. From the ancients the notion descended to our own 

 old writers on plants, and to those on the Continent ; and the names of 

 SceaiL tie Salomon in France, of the Italian Sigillo di Solomone, and the Spanish 

 Sello de Salomon, all have reference to the belief that the plant bore the 

 impress of the celebrated seal of him who spoke of plants from the cedar of 

 Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall. Gerarde says: "But note what 

 experience hath found out, and of late dales especially, among the vulgar sort 

 of people of Hampshire, which Galen, Dioscorides, or any other that hath 

 written of plants, have not so much as dreamed of ; which is, that if any of 

 what sexe or age whatsoever that chance to have any bones broken, in what 

 parte of their bodies it be, their refuge is to stampe the rootes hereof, and 

 give it to the patient in ale to drinke, which soddeneth and gleweth together 

 the bones in very short space and very strongly ; yea, although the bones be 

 but slenderly and unhandsomely placed and wrapped up." 



This old doctrine of " signatures " — the belief that plants bore outward 

 signs of invisible virtues — was believed in those days, ere herbcraft had 

 yielded to botany, by all those 



" Who knew the caiise of everie maladie, 

 Were it of colde or hote, or moist or drie." 



Our own countryman, John Ray, who, in this instance, as well as in many 

 others, was greatly in advance of his times, was among the first to express 

 his disbelief of the doctrine. In his work on "The Wisdom of God in 

 Creation " — a work whose design, in some measure, anticipated that of the 

 celebrated " Bridgewater Treatises "■ — this great naturalist remarks : "As for 

 the signatures of plants, or the notes impressed upon them as notices of their 

 virtues, some lay great stress upon them, accounting them strong arguments 

 to prove that some understanding principle is the highest original of the 

 work of Nature ; as indeed they wore, could it be certainly made to appear 

 that there were such marks designedly set upon them ; because all that I find 

 mentioned by authors seem to be rather fancied by men, than designed by 

 Nature to signifie or point out any such virtues or qualities as they would 

 make us believe. Howbeit, I will not deny but that the noxious and 

 malignant plants do, many of them, discover something of their nature by 



