1 66 pPant Tsore, I'Scge'r^ti/, and TSLjric/', 



The Sun. — Leaves: Succulent, with stout stalks, deeply veined, 

 pleasant green or tawny, with reddish stalks. Flowers : Yellow and 

 gold, or purple, handsome, glittering, and radiant. Roots : Strong, 

 deeply fixed in the earth, but not laterally. Odour: Agreeable, 

 acceptable, and pungent, strong, restorative to brain and eyes. 



The Moon. — Leaves: Pale, highly succulent, pith thick, firm, 

 strongly-developed veins, bottle-green. Flowers: Pale yellow or 

 greenish, watery, mellifluous, but uninteresting and without beauty. 

 Roots: Penetrating easily through water and earth, not durable, 

 and easily decayed, spreading neither thickly nor deeply. Odour: 

 Disagreeable, almost none, without pungency, redolent of the 

 earth, rain, or soft savour of honey. 



According to Indian mythology, herbs are placed under the 

 special protedliion of Mitra, the Sun. De Gubernatis tells us that 

 there are several Indian plants named after the great luminar}^ In 

 the Grecian Pantheon, the Solar-god, Apollo, possessed a know- 

 ledge of all the herbs. It was to Phoebus, the Sun-god, that poor 

 Clytie lost her heart, and, when changed into a flower, held firmly 

 by the root, she still turned to the Sun she loved, "and, changed 

 herself, still kept her love unchanged." As to the particular 

 Sunflower, Turnsole, Heliotrope, or Solsequium that is the floral 

 embodiment of the love-sick nymph, readers must be referred to 

 the disquisition under the heading " Sunflower." De Gubernatis 

 gives it as his opinion, that Clytie's flower is the Helianthemum 

 roseiim of De Candolle. In a previous chapter, certain plants have 

 been noticed which were supposed by the ancients to have been 

 specially under the domination of the Sun and Moon. According 

 to the di(5tum of wizards and wise folk, plants possessing magical 

 properties must as a general rule be gathered, if not by moonlight, 

 yet at any rate before sunrise, for the first appearance of the Sun's 

 rays immediately dispels all enchantment, and drives back the 

 spirits to their subterranean abodes. 



We are told in Deuterononi)^ xxxiii., 14, that precious things 

 are put forth by the Moon, but precious fruits by the Sun; and it is 

 certainly very remarkable that, although mankind in all ages have 

 regarded, and even worshipped, the Sun as being the supreme and 

 ruling luminary, from whose glorious life-giving rays, vegetation 

 of all kinds drew its very existence, yet that an idea should have 

 sprung up, and taken root widely and deeply, that the growth and 

 decay of plants were associated intimately with the waxing and 

 waning of the Moon. We have seen how the plant kingdom was 

 parcelled out by the astrologers, and consigned to the care of 

 different Planets; but, despite this, the Moon was held to have a 

 singular and predominant influence over vegetation, and it was 

 supposed that there existed a sympathy between growing and 

 declining nature and the Moon's wax and wane. Bacon seems to 

 have considered that even the "braine of man waxeth moister and 

 fuller upon the Full of the Moone ; " and, therefore, he continues, 



