discloses hidden treasures.  In Sicily a branch of the pomegranate tree is considered to be a most effectual means of ascertaining the whereabouts of concealed wealth.  Hence it has been invested with an almost reverential awe, and has been generally employed when search has been made for some valuable lost property.  In Silesia, Thuringia, and Bohemia the mandrake is, in addition to its many mystic properties, connected with the idea of hidden treasures.

Numerous plants are said to be either lucky or the reverse, and hence have given rise to all kinds of odd beliefs, some of which still survive in our midst, having come down from a remote period.

There is in many places a curious antipathy to uprooting the house-leek, some persons even disliking to let it blossom, and a similar prejudice seems to have existed against the cuckoo-flower, for, if found accidentally inverted in a May garland, it was at once destroyed.  In Prussia it is regarded as ominous for a bride to plant myrtle, although in this country it has the reputation of being a lucky plant.  According to a Somersetshire saying, “The flowering myrtle is the luckiest plant to have in your window, water it every morning, and be proud of it.”  We may note here that there are many odd beliefs connected with the myrtle.  “Speaking to a lady,” says a correspondent of the Athenaeum (Feb. 5, 1848), “of the difficulty which I had always found in getting a slip of myrtle to grow, she directly accounted for my failure by observing that perhaps I had not spread the tail or skirt of my dress, and looked proud during the time I was planting it.  It is a popular belief in Somersetshire that unless a slip of myrtle is so planted, it will never take root.”  The deadly nightshade is a plant of ill omen, and Gerarde describing it says, “if you will follow my counsel, deal not with the same in any case, and banish it from your gardens, and the use of it also, being a plant so furious and deadly; for it bringeth such as have eaten thereof into a dead sleep, wherein many have died.”  There is a strong prejudice to sowing parsley, and equally a great dislike to transplanting it, the latter notion being found in South America.  Likewise, according to a Devonshire belief, it is highly unlucky to plant a bed of lilies of the valley, as the person doing so will probably die in the course of the next twelve months.

The withering of plants has long been regarded ominous, and, according to a Welsh superstition, if there are faded leaves in a room where a baby is christened it will soon die.  Of the many omens afforded by the oak, we are told that the change of its leaves from their usual colour gave more than once “fatal premonition” of coming misfortunes during the great civil wars; and Bacon mentions a tradition that “if the oak-apple, broken, be full of worms, it is a sign of a pestilent year.”  In olden times the decay of the bay-tree was considered an omen of disaster, and it is stated that, previous to the death of Nero, though the winter was very mild, all these trees withered to the roots, and that a great pestilence in Padua was preceded by the same phenomenon. [2] Shakespeare speaks of this superstition:—­