Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/574

264 a distinct forme but also given them particular signatures whereby a Man may read even in legible characters the use of them." He gives amongst other instances of the doctrine of signatures the walnut, which resembles the human head (the kernels like the brains, etc.). In regard to plants which have no signatures, he intimates that this is to provide a fit subject of study for mankind, "for Man was not brought into the World to live like an idle Loyterer or Truant but to exercise his Minde."

It is easy to pour scorn on the credulity of the seventeenth century herbalists who were the exponents of a depraved astrological lore. But signs are not wanting that we are possibly on the eve of a revival of this old teaching, and, apart from its scientific aspect, surely there are very few flower-lovers who do not connect flowers and stars. Do not flowers seem to reflect in microscopic form those glorious flowers which deck the firmament of heaven? There is something so star-like in many flowers that almost involuntarily one's mind connects them with the luminaries in the expanse above us, and from this it is but a short step to the belief that there is between them a secret communion which is past our understanding. Mystics of all ages and all civilizations have felt the existence of this secret understanding between what are surely the most beautiful of God's creations—flowers and stars—and the fascination is in no small part due to the exquisite frailty and short-lived beauty of the flowers of earth and the stupendous majesty of the flowers in the heavens, those myriad worlds in whose existence a thousand years is but a passing dream.