MYSTIC PLANTS. 



437 



selected as substitutes for the real palm, because they 

 are generally the only things, at this season, which 

 can be easily procured, in which the power of vege- 

 tation can be discovered." Box was evidently in use 

 in this country in the middle 

 of the sixteenth century and 

 it is possible that the use of 

 box was discontinued on the 

 plea that it was a Romish 

 superstition ; although the 

 bearing of palms was de- 

 clared in 1536 "not to be 

 contemned and cast away ; " 

 yet in Stow's Chronicle (1548) 

 it is stated that "this yeere 

 the ceremony of bearing 

 palmes on Palme Sonday was 

 left off, and not used as be- 

 fore." The ceremony of 

 "blessing the box" is still 

 continued in some of the Fig. 89. — Medicago 

 countries of the continent. 1 echinus. — "Gardener's 

 Another, and more humble 



plant, a kind of clover {Medicago echinus), found in 

 the Levant, is held in reverence as a supposed 



1 See " Gardener's Chronicle " for a rtsumd of a sermon on 

 one of these occasions, in which the symbolism of the box is 

 insisted upon, April 19, 1873, p. 543. 



