which was, and is, supposed to be good for the eye, owing
to a black pupil-like spot in its corolla, is noticed by Milton, who, it
may be remembered, represents the archangel as clearing the vision of
our first parents by its means:--

"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]

In accordance, also, with the same principle it was once generally
believed that the seeds of ferns were of an invisible sort, and hence,
by a transference of properties, it came to be admitted that the
possessor of fern-seed could likewise be invisible--a notion which
obtained an extensive currency on the Continent. As special good-luck
was said to attend the individual who succeeded in obtaining this mystic
seed, it was eagerly sought for--Midsummer Eve being one of the
occasions when it could be most easily procured. Thus Grimm, in his
"Teutonic Myt