According to Indian mythology, herbs are placed under the special protection of Mitra, the Sun. De Gubernatis tells us that there are several Indian plants named after the great luminary. In the Grecian Pantheon, the Solar-god, Apollo, possessed a knowledge of all the herbs. It was to Phœbus, the Sun-god, that poor Clytie lost her heart, and, when changed into a flower, held firmly by the root, she still turned to the Sun she loved, “and, changed herself, still kept her love unchanged.” As to the particular Sunflower, Turnsole, Heliotrope, or Solsequium that is the floral embodiment of the love-sick nymph, readers must be referred to the disquisition under the heading “SUNFLOWER.” De Gubernatis gives it as his opinion, that Clytie’s flower is the _Helianthemum roseum_ of De Candolle. In a previous chapter, certain plants have been noticed which were supposed by the ancients to have been specially under the domination of the Sun and Moon. According to the dictum of wizards and wise folk, plants possessing magical properties must as a general rule be gathered, if not by moonlight, yet at any rate before sunrise, for the first appearance of the Sun’s rays immediately dispels all enchantment, and drives back the spirits to their subterranean abodes. We are told in Deuteronomy xxxiii., 14, that precious things are put forth by the Moon, but precious fruits by the Sun; and it is certainly very remarkable that, although mankind in all ages have regarded, and even worshipped, the Sun as being the supreme and ruling luminary, from whose glorious life-giving rays, vegetation of all kinds drew its very existence, yet that an idea should have sprung up, and taken root widely and deeply, that the growth and decay of plants were associated intimately with the waxing and waning of the Moon. We have seen how the plant kingdom was parcelled out by the astrologers, and consigned to the care of different Planets; but, despite this, the Moon was held to have a singular and predominant influence over vegetation, and it was supposed that there existed a sympathy between growing and declining nature and the Moon’s wax and wane. Bacon seems to have considered that even the “braine of man waxeth moister and fuller upon the Full of the Moone;” and, therefore, he continues, “it were good for those that have moist braines, and are great drinkers, to take fume of Lignum, Aloes, Rose-Mary, Frankincense, &c., about the Full of the Moone.” He also tells us, in his Natural History, that “the influences of the Moon are four: the drawing forth of heat, the inducing of putrefaction, the moisture, and the exciting of the motions of spirits.”