The bear is another common prefix.  Thus there is the bear’s-foot, from its digital leaf, the bear-berry, or bear’s-bilberry, from its fruit being a favourite food of bears, and the bear’s-garlick.  There is the bear’s-breech, from its roughness, a name transferred by some mistake from the Acanthus to the cow-parsnip, and the bear’s-wort, which it has been suggested “is rather to be derived from its use in uterine complaints than from the animal.”

Among names in which the word cow figures may be mentioned the cow-bane, water-hemlock, from its supposed baneful effects upon cows, because, writes Withering, “early in the spring, when it grows in the water, cows often eat it, and are killed by it.”  Cockayne would derive cowslip from cu, cow, and slyppe, lip, and cow-wheat is so nicknamed from its seed resembling wheat, but being worthless as food for man.  The flowers of the Arum maculatum are “bulls and cows;” and in Yorkshire the fruit of Crataegus oxyacantha is bull-horns;—­an old name for the horse-leek being bullock’s-eye.

Many curious names have resulted from the prefix pig, as in Sussex, where the bird’s-foot trefoil is known as pig’s-pettitoes; and in Devonshire the fruit of the dog-rose is pig’s-noses.  A Northamptonshire term for goose-grass (Galium aparine) is pig-tail, and the pig-nut (Brunium flexuosum) derived this name from its tubers being a favourite food of pigs, and resembling nuts in size and flavour.  The common cyclamen is sow-head, and a popular name for the Sonchus oleraceus is sow-thistle.  Among further names also associated with the sow may be included the sow-fennel, sow-grass, and sow-foot, while the sow-bane (Chenopodium rubrum), is so termed from being, as Parkinson tells us, “found certain to kill swine.”

Among further animal prefixes may be noticed the wolfs-bane (Aconitum napellus), wolf’s-claws (Lycopodium clavatum), wolf’s-milk (Euphorbia helioscopia), and wolfs-thistle (Carlina acaulis).  The mouse has given us numerous names, such as mouse-ear (Hieracium pilosella), mouse-grass (Aira caryophyllea), mouse-ear scorpion-grass (Myosotis palustris), mouse-tail (Myosurus minimus), and mouse-pea.  The term rat-tail has been applied to several plants having a tail-like inflorescence, such as the Plantago lanceolata (ribwort plantain).

The term toad as a prefix, like that of dog, frequently means spurious, as in the toad-flax, a plant which, before it comes into flower, bears a tolerably close resemblance to a plant of the true flax.  The frog, again, supplies names, such as frog’s-lettuce, frog’s-foot, frog-grass, and frog-cheese; while hedgehog gives us such names as hedgehog-parsley and hedgehog-grass.

Connected with the dragon we have the name dragon applied to the snake-weed (Polygonum bistorta), and dragon’s-blood is one of the popular names of the Herb-Robert.  The water-dragon is a nickname of the Caltha palustris, and dragon’s-mouth of the Digitalis purpurea.