106 THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 
tributes quite remarkable healing powers to this plant, 
while in the old English herbals references are fre- 
quent. A plantago was known to the Greeks, from the 
shape of the leaf, as armoglossan or “lamb’s tongue,” 
by which name it is also widely known in rural England, 
the fondness of sheep for this herb being also proverbial. 
An old English herbal writer, Gervaise Markham, 
1568-1637, recommends a decoction of plantains, Knot- 
grass, and other herbs, for the treatment of what he 
calls “broken joynts.”” So eminent a man as Robert 
Boyle, in his work “Medicinal Experiments,” 1718, gives 
a recipe consisting of the entire plant of “Rose-plantane” 
(P. media) chopped with butter, as a cure for madness 
in dogs. The flowerhead of the common Rib-herb, 
P. lanceolata, was widely used in England as a diviner 
of love secrets, somewhat after the same manner as the 
seed heads of the dandelion. 
The North American Indians called the same plant 
“White man’s foot,” because it sprang up wherever the 
white man settled. Longfellow, in “The Song of Hia- 
watha,” introduces this association :— 
Wheresoe’er they tread, beneath them 
Springs a flower unknown among us, 
Springs the White Man’s Foot in blossom. 
he following references by Shakespeare confirm the 
healing reputation of the herb “Love’s Labour Lost,” 
(act 3, sc. 1): 
Here’s a Costard broken in a shin, 
O, sir, plantain, a plain plantain; 
No envoy, no envoy; no salve, sir, but a plain plantain. 
And in “Romeo and Juliet,” (act 1, sc. 2)— 
Rom.: Your plantain leaf is excellent for that. 
Ben.: For what, I pray thee? 
Rom.: For your broken shin. 
_ The English poet W. Shenstone (1714-1763) writes 
oi— 
“The plantain ribbed that heals the reaper’s wound.” The 
flower heads of P. /anceolata are very widely known amongst 
children as “ soldiers,’ &c., and are used in a game in which 
the heads are struck against one another to knock them off the 
stalks. The Germans call them ‘“ Tuefelskopf or “devil’s head.’ 
The plant itself is known in Germany as “Wegerich” or “the 
watcher,” there being an old legend to the effect that it first 
