A Handful of Weeds 359 
plantain, to put beneath their heads that night, 
when they would surely dream of their future hus- 
bands.’’ Some matter-of-fact person long ago dis- 
covered that the ‘“‘coal’’ is only a blackened root, 
which may be found whenever it is looked for. 
From long-cherished faith in its potency it has 
come about perhaps that in the north of England 
the flower-spikes of the closely allied ripple-grass 
(Plantago lanceolata) were used as love-charms. 
But no magic which the plantain may have wrought 
as an inspirer of dreams or fetterer of maiden fancy 
is more wonderful than the story of its past as told 
by modern science. 
“Our fields are full,’’ says Grant Allen, ‘‘ of de- 
generate flowers,’’ and this is one of them. When 
we look closely at its green spikes we see that 
they are made up of numerous little four-rayed 
blossoms, whose pale and faded petals are tucked 
away out of sight, flat against the calyx. Yet their 
shape and arrangement distinctly recall the beau- 
tiful blue veronica, and it has been surmised that 
the two are very distant cousins. But the plantain 
flowers gave up devoting themselves to insects and 
became adapted for fertilization by the wind in- 
stead. Then the petals were no longer needed as 
a lure, and Nature withdrew their bright blue pig- 
