— 
The Folk-Lore of Plants. 339 
States, many consider ash leaves a cure for the bite of a 
rattlesnake. Dr. Holmes uses this superstition effectively, 
in one of the closing scenes of “‘ Elsie Venner.” Elsie, who 
was supposed to have had engrafted upon her womanly 
nature that of a rattlesnake, received a basket of autumn 
flowers, the lining of the basket being the leaflets of the 
white ash. ‘She took out the flowers, one by one, her 
breathing growing hurried, her eyes staring, her hands 
trembling,—till, as she came near the bottom of the basket, 
she flung out all the rest with a hasty movement, looked 
upon the olive-purple leaflets as if paralyzed for a moment, 
shrunk up as it were, into herself, in a curdling terror, dashed 
the basket from her, and fell back senseless, with a faint cry 
which chilled the blood of the startled listeners.” Mrs. Bergen 
states that in Portland and Boston it is thought that children, 
when teething, should wear a string of the seeds of Job’s 
tears (Coix lachryma.) They are sold in Peabody, Massa- 
chusetts for sore-throat and diphtheria, as well. One 
mother “triumphantly brought to a druggist of whom she 
had bought them a string of these seeds covered with a 
dark incrustation which she identified as the substance of 
the disease driven out into the necklace, but which to the 
apothecary bore a strong resemblance to dirt.”’ Everyone 
who passed his childhood in the country, will recall many 
such remedies; the virtues of “sassprilla,” ‘“ skunk 
cabbage,” “ goold-thread,” and other “ yarbs,” being 
almost universally recognized, in places somewhat removed 
from the centres of civilization. Early superstitions are 
rapidly vanishing before the light of modern science, and 
all should record at once any legend or peculiarity met 
with, before it is too late, for in them lies much of the 
history of our people; its national legends are often 
the only immortal possession of a race. » 
‘Some Bits of Plant-Lore, Jour. Am. Folk-Lore, March 1892. 
