210 Signatures and Astrology [ch. 



(Text-fig. 109) and an adder's head is introduced below 

 the drawing of the plant known as the " Adder's tongue." 



It would serve little purpose to deal in detail with the 

 various exponents of the doctrine of signatures, such, for 

 example, as Johann Popp, who in 1625 published a herbal 

 written from this standpoint, and containing also some 

 astrological botany. We will only now refer to one of 

 the later champions of the signatures of plants, an English 

 herbalist of the seventeenth century, who made the subject 

 peculiarly his own. This was William Cole 1 , a Fellow of 

 New College, Oxford, who lived and botanised at Putney 

 in Surrey. He seems to have been a person of much 

 character, and his vigorous arguments would often be very 

 telling, were it possible to admit the soundness of his 

 premisses. 



William Cole carried the doctrine of signatures to as 

 extreme a point as can well be imagined. His account of 

 the Walnut, from his work 'Adam in Eden,' 1657, may be 

 quoted as an illustration : " Wall-nuts have the perfect 

 Signature of the Head: The outer husk or green Covering, 

 represent the Pericranium, or outward skin of the skull, 

 whereon the hair groweth, and therefore salt made of those 

 husks or barks, are exceeding good for wounds in the head. 

 The inner wooddy shell hath the Signature of the Skull, 

 and the little yellow skin, or Peel, that covereth the Kernell 

 of the hard Meninga and Pia-mater, which are the thin 

 scarfes that envelope the brain. The Kernel hath the very 

 figure of the Brain, and therefore it is very profitable for 

 the Brain, and resists poysons; For if the Kernel be bruised, 

 and moystned with the quintessence of Wine, and laid upon 

 the Crown of the Head, it comforts the brain and head 

 mightily." 



In Cole's writings we meet with instances of a curious 

 confusion of thought, which characterised the doctrine of 

 signatures. The signature in some cases represents an 

 animal injurious to man, and is taken to denote that the 

 plant in question will cure its bites or stings. For instance, 

 "That Plant that is called Adders tongue, because the stalke 

 of it represents one, is a soveraigne wound Herbe to cure the 



1 The name of this botanist is spelt " Coles " on the title-pages of his works, 

 but the spelling " Cole " appears to be more correct. 



