PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
“ uncanny and eerie ”; our ancestors could not understand a 
plant which seemed to them to have neither flower nor seed, 
and so they boldly asserted it had neither. “This kinde of 
Feme,” says Lyte in 1587, “beareth neither flowers nor sede, 
except we shall take for sede the black spots growing on the 
backsides of the leaves, the whiche some do gather thinking to 
worke wonders, but to say the trueth it is nothing els but 
trumperie and superstition.” A 
plant so strange must needs 
have strange qualities, but the 
peculiar power attributed to it 
of making persons invisible arose 
thus :—It w r as the age in which 
the doctrine of signatures was 
fully believed in; according to 
which doctrine Nature, in giv¬ 
ing particular shapes to leaves 
and flowers, had thereby plainly 
taught for what diseases they 
were specially useful. 1 Thus a 
heart-shaped leaf was for heart 
disease, a liver-shaped for the 
liver, a bright-eyed flower was for the eyes, a foot-shaped 
flower or leaf would certainly cure the gout, and so on ; and 
then when they found a plant which certainly grew and in¬ 
creased, but of which the organs of fructification were invisible, 
it was a clear conclusion that properly used the plant would 
confer the gift of invisibility. Whether the people really 
believed this or not we cannot say, 2 but they were quite ready 
1 See Brown’s “ Religio Medici,” p. ii. 2. 
2 It probably was the real belief, as we find it so often mentioned as a 
positive fact; thus Browne— 
“ Poor silly fool! thou striv'st in vain to know 
If I enjoy or love where thou lov’st so; 
Since my affection ever secret tried 
Blooms like the Fern, and seeds still unespied.” 
Poems , p. 26 (Sir E. Brydges’ edit. 1815)* 
