“Thus we are told, that the Vertue of the Cophee was discover’d by marking what the _Goats_ so greedily brutted upon. So _Æsculapius_ is said to have restor’d dismember’d _Hippolitus_ by applying some simples, he observ’d a _Serpent_ to have us’d another dead _Serpent_.” The last instance sounds mythical! But goats have really more than once led mankind to some useful bit of knowledge. There is a Chilian plant, _Boldo_, a tincture of the leaves of which are frequently administered in France for hepatic complaints, and this is the history of the discovery of its virtues. “The goats in Chili had been for many years subject to enlargement of the liver, and the owners of the flocks had begun to despair of them as a source of revenue, until it was observed that certain flocks were exempt from the complaint, whilst others in adjacent districts continued subject to it. It was ultimately discovered that the goats browsing in fields where _Boldo_ grew were never a prey to hepatic diseases, and the herb became gradually known and used, first by South American and then by French druggists.” _Boldo_ is little used in England.
Sheep seek Dandelions; and Miss Anne Pratt quotes an agricultural report, describing how some weakly lambs were moved into a field full of Dandelions in flower, and how rapidly the conspicuous blossoms were devoured. Finally, as the flowers grew fewer and fewer, the lambs were seen pushing one another away from the coveted plants, and in this field they speedily gained in health and strength. _Valerianella Olitaria_ is said to be a favourite food of lambs, and so gains its name of Lambs’ Lettuce. Shepherds and flocks have always been favourite subjects for poetry, and Drayton touches them very prettily:--
When the new wash’d flock from the river side, Coming as white as January’s snow, The ram with nose-gays bears his horns in pride, And no less brave the bell-wether doth go.
Nep or Cat-mint is said to have a great attraction for cats. Of which there is this old rime:--
If you set it, the catts will eate it, If you sow it, the catts won’t know it.[104]
The weasel, with a grand knowledge of counter-poisons, “arms herself with eating of Rue,” _before_ fighting a serpent. Folkard says that in the north of England there is a tradition that when hops were first planted there, nightingales also made their first appearance, and he adds that both have long since disappeared, north of the Humber. In other parts of England there is an idea (quite a false one) that nightingales will only sing where cowslips flourish. The cuckoo is connected with both plants and minerals. In some parts of Germany, Mr Friend writes, the call of the cuckoo is thought to reveal mines, and the cuckoo’s bread, the purple orchis, grows most abundantly where rich veins of metal lie beneath. There is a story about the plantain, a plant with a most interesting legendary history, in which the cuckoo appears. Once the Plantain or Waybread was a maiden, always watching for her absent lover, and at last she was changed into the plant that almost always grows by the road-side. And now every seventh year the plantain becomes a bird, either the Cuckoo or the Cuckoo’s servant, the Dinnick.