PLANT-LORE NOTES
TO MRS. LATHAM'S WEST SUSSEX SUPERSTITIONS.
HAVING had the privilege of reading in proof Mrs. Latham's charming little monograph of West Sussex Folk-Lore, which may well serve as a model for other papers of similar character, I am induced to offer a few hurried notes upon some of the plant-lore therein recorded. I regret that time does not permit me to make similar comments upon the whole paper, so far as it relates to natural history, in the folk-lore of which I am especially interested; but I trust to have an opportunity at some future period of bringing before the members some further communications upon this subject, and may therefore perhaps be allowed to say how glad I shall be to receive information regarding the folk-lore of any branch of natural history.
The Blackberry.
P. 14 (60). I am informed that in some parts of Ireland it is believed that the devil puts his foot on the blackberries after Michaelmas day; and Threlkeld, in his Synopsis Stirpium Hibernicarum (1727), speaking of blackberries, mentions as a "vulgar error" the belief that "after Michaelmas the D——l casts his club over them."
The Hazel Nut.
P. 14 (61). In Suffolk and Kent (Notes and Queries, 4th Series, ix. 166), and in Lincolnshire (ibid . 225), Holy Eood Day (Sept. 14th) was supposed to be the special occasion when nutters were likely to meet the devil, or "to come to grief of some kind." This is the more strange, seeing that the same day was recognised by
