136 



FAMILIAR IV1LD t'LOWLHS. 



The mediaeval writers received in full faith much that 

 the still earlier authorities asserted, hence their writing- is 

 a good deal taken up with endeavours to identify the 

 plants enumerated by such authors as Pliny and Dioseorides, 

 and described by them not so much from a botanical point 

 of view as a medicinal. The ancient writers ascribed the 

 most wonderful healing powers to the various plants, and 

 it became therefore a matter of no small importance to 

 duly discriminate and identify them in order that full 

 benefit might be taken of the wealth of remedial virtue 

 thus revealed. As Pliny has a pes galli and Dioscorides 

 apes conn, we may easily see how such names obtained a 

 footing with our early writers. 



The corn crowfoot is the most potent of a potent genus. 

 Three ounces of its juice given to a dog killed it in four 

 minutes, and though animals as a rule instinctively avoid 

 the plant, sheep have been killed through eating it. Fortu- 

 nately it is not a plant of the pastures, and as it grows 

 chiefly amidst the corn and amongst crops where cattle have 

 no business to be, its deleterious qualities do no harm. 



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