crowd.[32] Petronius (Fragmentum XXXIII, ed. Buecheler, Berolini, 1895) mentions chestnuts as an amatory gift: aurea mala mihi, dulcis mea Marcia, mittis mittis et hirsutae munera castaneae. In Genesis again is recorded a most interesting and instructive example of the belief in the magic efficacy of plants. “And Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest and found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother Leah” (xxx. 14 A.V.). Reuben brings his mother mandrakes (Love Apples), which Rachel desires to have. Whereupon Leah bargains with Rachel, and the latter for a portion of the fruit consents that Jacob shall that night return to the bed of his elder wife, who indeed conceives and in due time she bare Issachar. Leah ate of the mandrake as a charm to induce pregnancy, and no disapproval of such use is expressed. A similar theme is treated in Machiavelli’s famous masterpiece of satirical comedy _La Mandragola_,[33] written between 1513 and 1520, and performed by request before Leo X in the April of the latter year. It had already been acted in Florence. In this play Callimaco is bent upon securing as his mistress Lucrezia, the wife of a gullable doctor of laws, Messer Nicia, whose one wish in life is to get a son. Callimaco is introduced as a physician to Nicia, to whom he explains that a potion of mandragora administered to the lady will remove her sterility, but that it has fatal consequences to the husband. He must perish unless some other man be first substituted whose action will absorb the poison, and leave Lucrezia free to become the mother of a blooming family. This plot is fully worked out, and by the services of his supple confederates Callimaco is introduced to Lucrezia’s bedchamber as the necessary victim, and gains his desire. Mandrakes and mallows were potent in all forms of enchantment, and about the mandrake in particular has grown up a whole library of legend, which it would require much time and space thoroughly to investigate. Western lore is mainly of somewhat a grim character, but not entirely, and by the Orientals mandrake is regarded as a powerful aphrodisiac. So in Canticles VII, 13, we have: Mandragoræ dederunt odorem. (The mandrakes give a fragrant smell.) In antiquity mandrakes were used as an anæsthetic. Dioscorides alludes to the employment of this herb before patients have to be cut or burned; Pliny refers to its odour as causing sleep during an operation; Lucian speaks of it as used before cautery; and both Galen and Isidorus have passages which mention its dormitive quality. The Shakespearean allusions have rendered this aspect familiar to all.