It is essential, however, that the flower be found by
accident, for he who seeks it never finds it. In Sweden hazel-nuts are
reputed to have the power of making invisible, and from their reputed
magical properties have been, from time immemorial, in great demand for
divination. All those plants whose leaves bore a fancied resemblance to
the moon were, in days of old, regarded with superstitious reverence.
The moon-daisy, the type of a class of plants resembling the pictures of
a full moon, were exhibited, says Dr. Prior, "in uterine complaints, and
dedicated in pagan times to the goddess of the moon." The moonwort
(_Botrychium lunaria_), often confounded with the common "honesty"
(_Lunaria biennis_) of our gardens, so called from the semi-lunar shape
of the segments of its frond, was credited with the most curious
properties, the old alchemists affirming that it was good among other
things for converting quicksilver into pure silver, and unshoeing such
horses as trod upon it. A similar virtue was ascribed to the horse-shoe
vetch (_Hippocrepis comosa_), so called from the shape of the legumes,
hence another of its mystic nicknames was "unshoe the horse."
But referring to the doctrine of signatures in folk-medicine, a
favourite garden flower is Solomon's seal (_Polygonatum multiflorum_).
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