What clearer example of magic could one ask than the conclusion that the odor of the burning horn of a stag has the power of dispelling serpents, because enmity exists between stags and snakes, and the former track the latter to their holes and extract the snakes thence, despite all resistance, by the power of their breath? Or that on this same account the sovereign remedy for snake-bite comes “ex coagulo hinnulei matris in utero occisi?” Or that, since the stag is not subject to fever, the eating of its flesh will prevent that disease, especially if the animal has died of a single wound? What more magical than to fancy that the longest tooth of a fish could have any efficacy in the cure of fever? Or that excluding the person who had tied it on from the sight of the patient for five days would complete a perfect charm? Or that wearing as an amulet the carcass of a frog, minus the claws and wrapped in a piece of russet-colored cloth, would be of any aid against disease?[77] Yet the _Natural History_ is full of such things. To plants, for example, Pliny assigns powers no less marvelous than those which he has attributed to animals. There is one plant which, held in the hand, has a beneficial effect upon the groin;[78] another overcomes the asp with torpor, and hence, beaten up with oil, is a remedy for the sting of that snake.[79] Fern, he says, if mowed down with the edge of a reed or uprooted by a ploughshare on which a reed has been placed, will not spring up again.[80] Moreover, in his twenty-fourth book, immediately after having announced that he has sufficiently discussed for the present the marvelous properties attributed to herbs by the magi,[81] he proceeds to mention the following remedies. One is a quick cure for headache, and consists in gathering a plant growing on the head of a statue and attaching it to your neck with a red string. Another is a cure for tertian fever, and consists in plucking a certain herb before sunrise on the banks of a stream and in fastening it to the patient’s left arm without his knowledge. A third recipe instructs us that plants which have taken root in a sieve that has been thrown into a hedge-row “decerptae adalligataeque gravidis partus adcelerant.” A fourth would have herbs growing on dunghills a cure for quinzy, and a fifth assures us that sprains may be speedily cured by the application of a plant “iuxta quam canes urinam fundunt,” torn up by the roots and not allowed to touch iron.[82]