Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/573

Rh one of the wonders in the Garden of Eden. After the middle of the seventeenth century very little belief in "The Vegetable Lamb" remained amongst men of letters, but it continued to be a subject of discussion for at least another 150 years. The origin of this extraordinary myth is undoubtedly to be found in the ancient descriptions of the cotton plant. See Herodotus (lib. III. cap. 106); Strabo (lib. xv. cap. 21); Theophrastus De Historia Plantarum (lib. iv. cap. 4); Pomponius Mela, De Situ Orbis (lib. iii. cap. 7); and Pliny, Naturalis Historia.

Seveuteenth century astrological beliefs. Culpepper and Coles are the most noteworthy authors in whose writings we find the ancient astrological beliefs in their most degraded form. The instances in Culpepper are too numerous to quote, as they are to be found on every page.

Coles, however, treats with scorn and by arguments peculiarly his own the old belief in the connections between the stars and herbs. "It (the study of herbs) is a subject as antient as the Creation, yea more antient than the Sunne or the Moon, or Starres, they being created on the fourth day, whereas Plants were the third. Thus did God even at first confute the folly of those Astrologers who goe about to maintaine that all vegetables in their growth are enslaved to a necessary and unavoidable dependance on the influences of the Starres; whereas Plants were even when Planets were not." In another passage, however, he writes, "Though I admit not of Master Culpepper's Astrologicall way of every Planet's Dominion over Plants yet I conceive that the Sunne and Moon have generall influence upon them, the one for Heat the other for Moisture; wherein the being of Plants consists." The doctrine of signatures Coles accepts unquestioningly: "Though Sin and Sathan have plunged mankinde into an Ocean of infirmities yet the mercy of God which is over all his Workes maketh Grasse to grow up on the Mountains and Herbs for the Use of Men and hath not only stamped upon them (as upon every man)