116 WILD FLOWERS. 



same principle the consumptive patient hoped 

 for rehef from the hmgwort because of its spot- 

 ted leaves ; and who, in those hopeful, trusting 

 days, doubted that the pretty hepatica of the 

 garden, with its lobed leaves, so like the liver, 

 was created for the benefit of the sufferer under 

 the gloomy liver-complaint ? In looking over 

 the works on plants, written a few centuries 

 ago, one might infer that snakes, vipers, and 

 serpents abounded in our rural districts ; and 

 so many specific remedies are given against 

 their bites, that surely none but the ignorant 

 need have suffered from their effects. The very 

 sight of the viper's bugloss would, according to 

 Gerarde, drive vipers away from the spot, and 

 the seed of the larkspur had, he says, a still 

 more powerful influence. " Its vertues," says 

 he, " are so forcible, that the herbe only thrown 

 before the scorpion, or any other venemous 

 beast, causeth them to be without force and 

 strength to hurt ; insomuch that they cannot 

 move or stir until the herbe be taken away." 

 Yet Gerarde was a good botanist and an iutelli- 

 gent man, and these strange notions belonged 

 rather to people of those times in general, than 

 to an indindual. 



The corn gromwell, {Lithospermuin arvense^ 

 a plant about a foot high, with narrow-pointed 

 leaves, covered with white hairs, and seeds hard 

 as flint, is now very general in the corn-field : 

 and a plant called the shepherd's needle, {Scan- 

 dix pecteii,) attracts observation by its peculiai 

 seed-vessels. This plant is about a foot high, 



