pomorphon.' In digging the root, Pliny says 'there
are some ceremonies observed, first they that goe about this worke,
look especially to this that the wind be not in their face, but blow
upon their backs. Then with the point of a sword they draw three
circles round about the plant, which don, they dig it up afterwards
with their face unto the west.' Pliny says nothing of the fetich
qualities of the plant, as credited in modern and mediaeval Germany,
but mentions 'sufficient it is with some bodies to cast them into
sleep with the smel of mandrago.' This is like Shakespeare's 'poppy
and mandragora, and all the drowsy syrups of the world.' Plato and
Demosthenes[159] also speak of mandragora as a soporific. It is more
to the purpose of magic that Columella mentions 'the _half-human_
mandragora.' Here we touch the origin of the mandrake superstitions.
The roots have a kind of fantastic resemblance to the human shape;
Pliny describes them as being 'of a fleshy substance and tender.' Now
it is one of the recognised principles in magic, that things like each
other, however superficially, affect each other in a mystic way, and
possess identical properties. Thus, in Melanesia, according to Mr.
Codrington,[160] 'a stone in the shape of a pig, of a bread-fruit, of
a yam, was a most valuable find,' because it made pigs prolific, and
fertilised bread-fruit trees and yam-plots. In Scotland, too, 'stones
were called by the names of the limbs they resembled, as "eye-stane,"
"head-stane." A patient washed the affected part of his body, and
rubbed it well with the stone corresponding.'[161] In precisely the
same way, the mandrake root, being thought to resemble the human body,
was credited with human and superhuman powers. Josephus mentions[162]
a plant 'not easily caught, which slips away from them that wish to
gather it, and never stands still' till certain repulsive rites are
performed. These rites cannot well be reported here, but they are
quite familiar to Red Indian and to Bushman magic. Another way to dig
the plant spoken of by Josephus is by aid of the dog, as in the German
superstition quoted from Grimm. AElian also recommends the use of the
dog to pluck the herb aglaophotis, which shines at night.[163] When
the dog has dragged up the root, and died of terror, his body is to be
buried on the spot with religious honours and secret sacred rites.

So much for mandragora, which, like the healing potato, has to be
acquired stealthily