DOG'S MERCURY AND PLANTAIN. 133 



XIV. 



DOG'S MERCURY AND PLANTAIN. 



THE hedge and bank in Haye Lane are now 

 a perfect tangled mass of creeping plants, 

 among which I have just picked out a queer 

 little three-cornered flower, hardly known 

 even to village children, but christened by 

 our old herbalists ' dog's mercury.' It is an 

 ancient trick of language to call coarser or 

 larger plants by the specific title of some 

 smaller or cultivated kind, with the addition 

 of an animal's name. Thus we have radish 

 and horse-radish, chestnut and horse-chestnut, 

 rose and dog-rose, parsnip and cow-parsnip, 

 thistle and sow-thistle. On the same prin- 

 ciple, a somewhat similar plant being known 

 as mercury, this perennial weed becomes 

 dog's mercury. Both, of course, go back to 



