YELLOW OAT-GRASS — VERVAIN. 
71 
to this injury as the yellow oat-grass (avena flavescens), 
land in some seasons almost the whole of its panicles 
will be withered in a field of surrounding verdure. 
Pastures that are grazed must from circumstances be 
drier than those covered with herbage fit for the scythe ; 
j yet, from some unknown cause, this oat-grass seems 
less injured in this respect in grazing grounds, than in 
those where the herbage is reserved for mowing, 
j The plain, simple, unadorned vervain (verbena offi- 
cinalis) is one of our most common, and decidedly 
waste-loving plants. Disinclined to all cultured places, 
it fixes its residence by way-sides, and old stone quarries, 
thriving under the feet of every passing creature. The 
celebrity that this plant obtained in very remote times, 
without its possessing one apparent quality, or present- 
ing by its manner of growth, or form, any mysterious 
character to arrest the attention, or excite imagination, 
is very extraordinary, and perhaps unaccountable : most 
nations venerated, esteemed, and used it; the ancients 
had their Verbenalia, at which period the temples and 
frequented places were strewed and sanctified with ver- 
I vain ; the beasts for sacrifice, and the altars, were ver- 
Ijbenated, the one filleted, the other strewed, with the 
sacred herb; no incantation or lustration was perfect 
without the aid of this plant. That mistletoe should 
j have excited attention in days of darkness and igno- 
rance, is not a subject of surprise, from the extraordi- 
nary and obscure manner of its growth and propagation, 
and the season of the year in which it flourishes ; for 
II even the great lord Bacon ridicules the idea of its being 
I propagated by the operations of a bird as an “idle tra- 
dition,” saying, that the sap which produces this plant 
is such as the “ tree doth excerne and cannot assimilate.” 
I: These circumstances, and its great dissimilarity from 
the plant on which it vegetates, all combine to render 
it a subject of superstitious wonder: but that a lowly, 
ineffective herb like our vervain should have stimulated 
| the imaginations of the priests of Rome, of Gaul, and 
| of Greece, the magi of India, and the Druids of Britain, 
; is passing comprehension ; and, as Pennant observes, 
“ so general a consent proves that the custom arose be- 
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