ADDER'S-TONGUE FERN. 



97 



February. It has been recorded only from Co. Donegal and 

 Guernsey so far as our islands are concerned, but it occurs 

 all over the Mediterranean region, and in the islands of the 

 Atlantic. (Plate 106.) 



The generic name Ophioglossum is a compound of two Greek 

 words, ophzs, a serpent, and glossa^ a tongue. The specific 

 name vulgatum is the Latin equivalent for common or ordinary. 

 The English name, it will be seen, corresponds closely with the 

 scientific one, and for long both have been considered descrip- 

 tive ; but no adder has a tongue in any respect resembling the 

 fruit spike of this fern. The early botanists and herbalists, like 

 their monkish predecessors, were always on the look-out for 

 illustrations of the Doctrine of Signatures, according to which any 

 likeness or resemblance a plant might exhibit to some other 

 natural object would indicate the existence of a curative principle 

 in the plant. The ancients having settled that the spike of 

 fructification resembled an adder's tongue, no further proof 

 was required that the plant was an antidote to the bitings of 

 venomous snakes. For that reason the plant is still made into 

 Adder's-spear ointment in Surrey and Sussex. Coles, in his 

 "Adam in Eden" (1657) says the plant is called Adder's- 

 tongue " because out of every leaf it sendeth forth a kind of 

 Festal like . unto an adder's tongue ; it cureth the biting of 

 serpents." 



The remarkable point is how this "pestal" ever came to be 

 accepted as like an adder's tongue : it has troubled us for many 

 years, so that we have been forced to invent a theory. Though 

 the fruit spike presents no likeness to a snake's tongue, there is 

 some resemblance to the rattle of a rattlesnake, and our view of 

 the matter is that this organ, introduced to Europe by travellers 

 before the snake itself was known, may have been palmed off as 

 the "fang" of the snake. Popularly, though not actually, the 

 fang and the tongue are the same ; and it is only through some 

 confusion of this kind that the name can be explained. But 



