Originally published in 1911, this early work by Charles M. Skinner is both expensive and hard to find in its first edition. It delves deep into the mythology of the natural world and uncovers legends of times long forgotton. This is a fascinating work and highly recommended for all folklore enthusiasts. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

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Excerpt from Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants: In All Ages and in All Climes The very religions of all lands have fruits and trees in their cosmogonies, and plant-lore opens a quaint human document in its disclosure of that self-complacency which assumed the earth to be a strictly human property, in which all was for the service of man, and nothing existed of its own right. Out of this notion came the doctrine of signa tures - a system for discovering the medicinal uses of a plant from something in its external appearance that re sembled the disease it would cure. For instance, the leaves of aspen shook, hence it must be good for shaking palsy; gromwell had a stony seed, so it was prescribed for gravel; saxifrage grew in cracks in the rocks, therefore it would crack the deposits known as stone in the bladder; knots of scrophularia were prescribed for scrofulous swell ings, the pappus of scabiosa for leprosy, the spotted leaves of pulmonaria for consumption (notice how these beliefs and uses have named certain species), nettle tea was for nettle rash, blood-root for dysentery, turmeric for jaundice, because it was the color of a jaundiced skin; wood sorrel, having a heart-shaped leaf, was a cordial, or heart restora tive; liverwort corrected an inactive liver; dracontium, or herb dragon, was a cure for snake poison; briony cured dropsy, because its root suggested a swollen foot. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

When the legends and fables of simpler times pertain to trees and flowers, they are especially luminative of the mental processes of unschooled men; for the vegetable world has changed little in three thousand years, and the marks and colors that explain some beliefs are still impressed on the leaves and petals. The sjrtnbolism adopted therefrom is wide in meaning, and to this day is in common use. It is poetic, hence it appeals to every intelligence; for while we affect to prize poetry for its beauty, to the savage it was native speech, inasmuch as his vocabulary was allegoric-a humanization of the skies, the sunsets, the storms, the flowers. "We sometimes hear that ours is a material, dull age, yet we perpetuate terms and usances which ally us to the childhood of the race, and which stand for imagination and sheer loveliness. We still speak of laureled brows, palms of victory, the rose of beauty, the lily of purity, the oak of strength, willowy grace, fig-trees of shelter, and corn of abundance; we extend the olive branch of peace, we put our legs under our host's mahogany, we indicate poison by nightshade and toadstools, and health by flowers and fruits. Though Bacchus is no longer with us, we emblemize him MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF FLOWERS, ETC...