Formerly used as a love charm was dragon’s blood: a red resin extracted from the fruit of a palm tree called botanically calamus draco. Cast into a fire, dragon’s blood was believed, when accompanied by a binding spell in the form of a rhyming couplet, to induce an errant lover to return to the object of his passion. * * * * * Dog-stones, tubers of the orchis species, are shaped like the testiculi canis, and hence are so called. At one time this plant was assumed to have an amatory virtue. * * * * * In the case of women, darnel grass was considered an amatory provocation, when mixed with barley meal, myrrh, and frankincense. * * * * * The comparatively innocuous cucumber, used domestically in salads, has sometimes been credited, mainly for its phallic shape, with venereal properties. * * * * * In the Orient, the aromatic plant cumin, which is used as a condiment, is also considered aphrodisiacally. So with the pungent berry cubeb, native to Java, and used in cooking and medicinally. In the East, cubebs are chewed, sometimes powdered and mixed with honey: sometimes made into an infusion with cubeb leaves. The provocative virtues of cubeb peppers are widely known and esteemed, from Arabia to China, and have been used erotically since at least the thirteenth century. * * * * * Periapts and amulets of various types, both inanimate and organic, have been used with amatory prospects. Thus, in the Orient, betel nuts were so used. Or a lock of woman’s hair, over which a spell had been uttered. Or the human liver, as in ancient Greece, was considered the source of all desire and hence became a fetish. Or, in the East, a hyena’s udder, tied on the left arm, would induce the longed-for passion. * * * * * The aromatic plant basil, used as a condiment, was also credited with exciting reactions. So much so, in fact, that in Italy the herb was used by maidens as a love charm. Beans, too, were thought at all times to be highly amatory in their results. Hence the Church Father St. Jerome forbade the use of beans to nuns. Carrots, turnips, wild cabbage, and beets have also been included at various times in this category. Pliny the Elder, the Roman author of the Historia Naturalis, states that white beets are an amatory aid. * * * * * There was a long accepted tradition in the efficacy of certain fish, especially the barbel, which is mentioned by the Roman poet Ausonius in a poem dealing with various species of fish. * * * * * The fat of a camel’s hump, melted down, and also camel’s milk taken with honey are, in Oriental erotological literature, considered of marked venereal value.