Many trifoliated plants have been held sacred from a remote antiquity. The trefoil was eaten by the horses of Jupiter, and a golden, three-leaved, immortal plant, affording riches and protection, is noticed in Homer's Hymn _in Mercurium_. In the palaces of Nineveh, and on the medals of Rome, representations of triple branches, triple leaves and triple fruit are to be found. On the temples and pyramids of Gibel-el-Birkel, considered to be much older than those of Egypt, there are representations of a tri-leaved plant, which, in the illustrations of Hoskin's "Travels in Ethiopia," seem to be nothing else than the shamrock. The triad is still a favorite figure in national and heraldic emblems. _The Belladonna Lily._ This flower (the _Amaryllis formosissima_), in a strong light, has a yellow lustre like gold. It was originally named _flos Jacobœbus_, because some imagined that they discovered in it a likeness to the badge of the knights of the order of St. James, founded in Spain in the fourteenth century. _Thirty Years in Blossoming._ The bamboo tree does not blossom until it attains its thirtieth year, when it produces seed profusely and then dies. It is said that a famine was prevented in India, in 1812, by the sudden flowering of the bamboo trees, where fifty thousand people resorted to the jungles to gather the seed for food. _Mouse-Ear._ Lupton, in his third "Book of Notable Things," 1660, says: "Mousear, any manner of way administered to horses, brings this help unto them, that they cannot be hurt while the smith is shoeing of them; therefore it is called of many, herba clavorum, the herb of nails." _Mugwort._ Coles, in his "Art of Simpling," says: "If a footman take mugwort and put into his shoes in the morning, he may goe forty miles before noon, and not be weary." _The Shoe-black Plant._ There is a species of hibiscus growing in New South Wales, the showy flowers of which contain a large proportion of mucilaginous juice of a glossy, varnish-like appearance. Chinese ladies use the juice for dyeing their hair and eyebrows. In Java the flowers are used for blacking shoes. _St. John's Wort._ The common people in France and Germany gather this plant with great ceremony on St. John's day, and hang it in their windows as a charm against thunder and evil spirits. In Scotland it is carried about as a charm against witchcraft and enchantment, and the people fancy it cures ropy milk, which they suppose to be under some malignant influence. As the flowers, when rubbed between the fingers, yield a red juice, it has obtained the name of _Sanguis hominis_ (human blood) among some fanciful medical writers. The young maid stole through the cottage door, And blushed as she sought the plant of pow'r— "Thou silver glow-worm, O lend me thy light, I must gather the mystic St. John's wort to-night." _Vegetable Fungus._