(M40) Nor is the superstition confined to Europe and to people of European descent. In Morocco also the Mohammedans are of opinion that certain plants, such as penny-royal, marjoram, and the oleander, acquire a special magic virtue (_baraka_) when they are gathered shortly before midsummer. Hence the people collect these plants at this season and preserve them for magical or medical purposes. For example, branches of oleander are brought into the houses before midsummer and kept under the roof as a charm against the evil eye; but while the branches are being brought in they may not touch the ground, else they would lose their marvellous properties. Cases of sickness caused by the evil eye are cured by fumigating the patients with the smoke of these boughs. The greatest efficacy is ascribed to “the sultan of the oleander,” which is a stalk with four pairs of leaves clustered round it. Such a stalk is always endowed with magical virtue, but that virtue is greatest when the stalk has been cut just before midsummer. Arab women in the Hiaina district of Morocco gather _Daphne gnidium_ on Midsummer Day, dry it in the sun, and make it into a powder which, mixed with water, they daub on the heads of their little children to protect them from sunstroke and vermin and to make their hair grow well. Indeed such marvellous powers do these Arabs attribute to plants at this mystic season that a barren woman will walk naked about a vegetable garden on Midsummer Night in the hope of conceiving a child through the fertilizing influence of the vegetables.(143)