THE MANDRAKE. 
137 
the act of tearing them from the ground, that 
whoever did so died soon afterwards; and in 
consequence of this belief, dogs used to be 
employed, and were trained to obtain them. 
In the dark ages, this root, having so extra¬ 
ordinary a reputation, was used by the quacks 
and pretended fortune-tellers to impose upon 
the credulous; they professed that the spe¬ 
cimens in their possession were the real 
Mandrakes, brought from some scarcely 
heard of canton in China, and that they, 
consequently, had virtues in proportion to 
their rarity. Of course these gentlemen 
quite discarded the idea of the European 
Mandrake being the real one, and probably 
appealed to their well known quiescent de¬ 
parture from mother Earth as a proof that 
they were not, while the specimens in their 
possession were scarcely attainable, and only 
at the risk of life ; hence, the Mandrake has 
been handed down to us as an emblem of 
rarity, or rareness. 
