When the "Mortal Struggle" was produced (see _Nicholas Nickleby_) by Mr. Vincent Crummles at Portsmouth, with the aid of Miss Snevelicci, and the Infant Phenomenon, lurid lightning was much in request to astonish the natives; and this was sufficiently well simulated by igniting, with a sudden flash and a hiss, highly inflammable spores of the Club Moss projected against burning tow within a hollow cone, producing weird scenic effects. COLTSFOOT. The Coltsfoot, which grows abundantly throughout England in places of moist, heavy soil, especially along the sides of our raised railway banks, has been justly termed "nature's best herb for the lungs, and her most eminent thoracic." Its seeds are supposed to have lain [117] dormant from primitive times, where our railway cuttings now upturn them and set them growing anew; and the rotting foliage of the primeval herb by retaining its juices, is thought to have promoted the development and growth of our common earthworm. The botanical name of Coltsfoot is _Tussilago farfara_, signifying _tussis ago_, "I drive away a cold"; and _farfar_, the white poplar tree, which has a similar leaf. It is one of the Composite order, and the older authors named this plant, _Filius ante patrem_--"the son before the father," because the flowers appear and wither before the leaves are produced. These flowers, at the very beginning of Spring, stud the banks with gay, golden, leafless blossoms, each growing on a stiff scaly stalk, and resembling a dandelion in miniature. The leaves, which follow later on, are made often into cigars, or are smoked as British herbal tobacco, being mixed for this purpose with the dried leaves and flowers of the eye-bright, buckbean, betony, thyme, and lavender, to which some persons add rose leaves, and chamomile flowers. All these are rubbed together by the hands into a coarse powder, Coltsfoot forming quite one-half of the same; and this powder may be very beneficially smoked for asthma, or for spasmodic bronchial cough. Linnoeus said, "_Et adhuc hodie plebs in Suecia, instar tabaci contra tussim fugit_"--"Even to-day the Swiss people cure their coughs with Coltsfoot employed like tobacco." When the flowers are fully blown and fall off, the seeds with their "clock" form a beautiful head of white flossy silk, and if this flies away when there is no wind it is said to be a sure sign of coming rain. The Goldfinch often lines her nest with the soft pappus of the Coltsfoot. In Paris the Coltsfoot flower is painted on the doorposts of an apothecary's house. [118] From earliest times, the plant has been found helpful in maladies of the chest. Hippocrates advised it with honey for "ulcerations of the lungs." Dioscorides, Pliny, and Galen, severally commended the use of its smoke, conducted into the mouth through a funnel or reed, for giving ease to cough and difficult breathing; they named it _breechion_, from _breex_, a cough.