bark of the tree was regarded as a sovereign remedy for the ringworm. [18] Its leaves, too, when bruised and moistened with vinegar were used for ear-ache.  For scrofulous glands, the knotty tubers attached to the kernel-wort (Scrophularia nodosa) have been considered efficacious.  The pith of the elder, when pressed with the fingers, “doth pit and receive the impress of them thereon, as the legs and feet of dropsical persons do,” Therefore the juice of this tree was reckoned a cure for dropsy.  Our Lady’s thistle (Cardmis Marianus), from its numerous prickles, was recommended for stitches of the side; and nettle-tea is still a common remedy with many of our peasantry for nettle-rash.  The leaves of the wood-sorrel (Oxalis acetosella) were believed to preserve the heart from many diseases, from their being “broad at the ends, cut in the middle, and sharp towards the stalk.”  Similarly the heart-trefoil, or clover (Medicago maculata), was so called, because, says Coles in his “Art of Simpling,” “not only is the leaf triangular like the heart of a man, but also because each leaf contains the perfect image of an heart, and that in its proper colour—­a flesh colour.  It defendeth the heart against the noisome vapour of the spleen.”  Another plant which, on the same principle, was reckoned as a curative for heart-disease, is the heart’s-ease, a term meaning a cordial, as in Sir Walter Scott’s “Antiquary” (chap, xi.), “try a dram to be eilding and claise, and a supper and heart’s-ease into the bargain.”  The knot-grass (Polygonum aviculare), with its reddish-white flowers and trailing pointed stems, was probably so called “from some unrecorded character by the doctrine of signatures,” Suggests Mr. Ellacombe, [19] that it would stop the growth of children.  Thus Shakespeare, in his “Midsummer Night’s Dream” (Act iii. sc. 2), alludes to it as the “hindering knot-grass,” and in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Coxcomb” (Act ii. sc. 2) it is further mentioned:—­

  “We want a boy extremely for this function,
  Kept under for a year with milk and knot-grass.”

According to Crollius, the woody scales of which the cones of the pine-tree are composed “resemble the fore-teeth;” hence pine-leaves boiled in vinegar were used as a garlic for the relief of toothache.  White-coral, from its resemblance to the teeth, was also in requisition, because “it keepeth children to heed their teeth, their gums being rubbed therewith.”  For improving the complexion, an ointment made of cowslip-flowers was once recommended, because, as an old writer observes, it “taketh away the spots and wrinkles of the skin, and adds beauty exceedingly.”  Mr. Burgess, in his handy little volume on “English Wild Flowers” (1868, 47), referring to the cowslip, says, “the village damsels use it as a cosmetic, and we know it adds to the beauty of the complexion of the town-immured lassie when she searches for and gathers it herself in the early spring morning.”  Some of the old herbalists speak of moss gathered from a skull as useful for disorders of the head, and hence it was gathered and preserved.