HOW TO KNOW THE WILD FLOWERS 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 



UNTIL a comparatively recent period the interest in plants 

 centred largely in the medicinal properties, and sometimes in 

 the supernatural powers, which were attributed to them. 



O who can tell 

 The hidden power of herbes and might of magick spell ? 



sang Spenser in the " Faerie Queene ; " and to this day the names 

 of many of our wayside plants bear witness, not alone to the 

 healing properties which their owners were supposed to possess, 

 but also to the firm hold which the so-called " doctrine of sig- 

 natures " had upon the superstitious mind of the public. In an 

 early work on " The Art of Simpling," by one William Coles, 

 we read as follows: " Yet the mercy of God which is over all 

 his works, maketh Grasse to grow upon the Mountains and Herbes 

 for the use of men, and hath not only stamped upon them a dis- 

 tinct forme, but also given them particular signatures, whereby a 

 man may read, even in legible characters, the use of them." 

 Our hepatica or liver-leaf, owes both its generic and English 

 titles to its leaves, which suggested the form of the organ after 

 which the plant is named, and caused it to be considered "a 

 sovereign remedy against the heat and inflammation of the 

 liver."* 



Although his once-renowned system of classification has 

 since been discarded on account of its artificial character, it is 

 probably to Linnaeus that the honor is due of having raised the 



* Lyte. 

 I 



