The Folk-lore of Plants

"Then purged with euphrasy and rue His visual orbs, for he had much to see." Spenser speaks of it in the same strain:-- "Yet euphrasie may not be left unsung, That gives dim eyes to wander leagues around." And Thomson says:-- "If she, whom I implore, Urania, deign With euphrasy to purge away the mists, Which, humid, dim the mirror of the mind." With reference to its use in modern times, Anne Pratt[3] tells us how, "on going into a small shop in Dover, she saw a quantity of the plant suspended from the ceiling, and was informed that it was gathered and dried as being good for weak eyes;" and in many of our rural districts I learn that the same value is still attached to it by the peasantry. Again, it is interesting to observe how, under a variety of forms, this piece of superstition has prevailed in different parts of the world. By virtue of a similar association of ideas, for instance, the gin-seng [4] was said by the Chinese and North American Indians to possess certain virtues which were deduced from the shape of the root, supposed to resemble the human body [5]--a plant with which may be compared our mandrake. The Romans of old had their rock-breaking plant called "saxifraga" or sassafras; [6] and we know in later times how the granulated roots of our white meadow saxifrage (Saxifraga granulata), resembling small stones, were supposed to indicate its efficacy in the cure of calculous complaints. Hence one of its names, stonebreak. The stony seeds of the gromwell were, also, used in cases of stone--a plant formerly known as lichwale, or, as in a MS. of the fifteenth century, lythewale, stone-switch. [7]