268 The Poets Beasts. 



Venus, in order to cure her son, speeding to Crete to fetch 

 the plant 



" Well known to wounded goats, a sure relief 

 To draw the pointed steel, and ease the grief." 



It is true that " the goddess-mother brews the extracted 

 hquor with ambrosial dews, and odorous panacea," but the 

 healing of Eneas' hurt is none the less due to the herb. 



In Folkard's "Plant-lore"^ I find many items about the 

 weed. Thus, that Plutarch says that the women of Crete, 

 seeing how the goats, by eating dittany, cause the arrows to 

 fall from their wounds, learnt to make use of the plant to 

 aid them in childbirth. Gerard recounts that the plant is 

 most useful in drawing forth splinters of wood, bones, &c., 

 and in the healing of wounds, "especially those made with 

 invenomed weapons, arrowes shot out of guns, and such 

 like." The juice, he says, is so powerful, that by its mere 

 smell it " drives away venomous beasts, and doth astonish 

 them.''' When mixed with wine, the juice was also con- 

 sidered a remedy for the bites of serpents. According to 

 Apuleius, however, the plant possessed the property of 

 killing serpents. The dittany of Crete, it should be noted, 

 is not to be confounded with the dittany, dittander, or 

 pepper-wort of the English herbals. This plant, the 

 lepidium latifolhun, from its being used by thrifty house- 

 wives to season dishes with, obtained the name of poor 

 man's pei)per. 



From this knowledge of natural medicines, the goat then 

 became itself medicinal. Its blood had singular potencies. 

 False emeralds shivered to pieces under a drop of it. 

 Smear the palms of a sleeping man with it, and he will tell 

 you all his secrets. 



" To artists who wish to engrave glass handsomely, now 

 will I disclose to you a method exactly as I myself have 



* " riant-Iore Legends and Lyrics." .Sampson Low & Co. 



