BROAD-LEAVED PLANTA1X. 47 



and in both America and New Zealand has been called by 

 the aborigines the Englishman's Foot, for, with a strange 

 degree of certainty, wherever the stranger race has taken 

 possession of the soil, there the plantain in like manner 

 asserts its claim to a home. 



An old English name for the plantain is the way- 

 bread, a name apparently meaningless at first sight; but on 

 turning to some of the older herbalists, we find it given as 

 way-bred. The name, therefore, bears no allusion to any 

 food-yielding property, but to the habitat of the plant, 

 flourishing as it does by the roadside, born and bred amidst 

 the busy haunts of men. In a very curious old book, 

 " Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft/' it is called 

 way-broad. This opens out a new theory, that the plant 

 was possibly so called from its broad and spreading leaves 

 flaunting by every path-side. The Anglo-Saxon name for 

 the plant was wegbrced. The generic name, plantago, is 

 derived from the Latin word planta, the sole of the foot, 

 a name that may have been originally bestowed either from 

 the broad flat form of the leaves, from their closely ap- 

 pressed growth, in almost or complete contact with the 

 ground, or from their growing where they get trodden 

 under foot of man. 



Though the plant ministers in no way to the food and 

 sustenance of man, it is probably to many of our readers a 

 well-known food-plant. Cage-birds greatly enjoy it, and 

 its collection and sale along with the equally well-known 

 chickweed and groundsel is a well-recognised branch of 

 street industry. Many of our smaller native birds also 

 are indefatigable collectors of it, not, indeed, as a commercial 

 speculation, but for home consumption. 



The root-stock of the buoad-leaved plantain is short and 



