Note 249 — {41} Fifthly, Of Plants.

“It is but one sort, and that is broad-leaved plantain” (Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 188). Broad-leaved plantain (Gerard, p. 419),—Plantago major, L.; one of the most anciently and widely known of plants, and inhabiting, at present, all the great divisions of the earth. An account, similar to our author’s, of the name given to it by the American savages, is found in Kalm’s Travels. “Mr. Bartram had found this plant in many places on his travels; but he did not know whether it was an original American plant, or whether the Europeans had brought it over. This doubt had its rise from the savages (who always had an extensive knowledge of the plants of the country) pretending that this plant never grew here before the arrival of the Europeans. They therefore gave it a name which signifies the Englishman’s foot; for they say, that, where a European had walked, there this plant grew in his footsteps.”—Kalm’s Travels into North America, by Forster, vol. i. p. 92. But Dr. Pickering considers it possible, that, in North-west America at least, the plantain was introduced by the aborigines (Races of Man, pp. 317, 320): and, uncertain as this is admitted to be, the old vulgar names of the plant in Northern languages—as Wegerich and Wegetritt of the German, Weegblad and Weegbree of the Dutch, Veibred of the Danish, and Weybred of old English, all pointing to the plantain’s growing on ways trodden by man—suggest, perhaps, a far older supposed relation between this plant and the human foot than that mentioned above; and thus favor the derivation of the original Latin name (as old as Pliny, H. N., vol. xxv. 8, in § 39) from planta, the sole of the foot,—whether because the plantain is always trodden on, or, taking the termination go in plantago, as some philologists take it, to signify likeness (as doubtless in lappago, mollugo, asperugo; but this signification does not appear so clear in some other words with the like ending), because its leaves resemble the sole of the foot in flatness, breadth, marking, and so on. The possible derivation from planta, a plant, “per excellentiam, quasi plantam præstantissimam” (Tournef., Inst., vol. i. p. 128), though less open to question than that of Linnæus (“planta tangenda,” Phil. Bot., § 234), is certainly less significant than the other; which, with the statements (independent, so far as appears, of each other) of Josselyn and Kalm, if these may be relied on, seems to point to a very ancient co-incidence of thought, not unworthy of attention. Something else of the same sort is to be found in R. Williams, where he says (Key, l. c., p. 218) that the Massachusetts Indians called the constellation of the Great Bear mosk, or pawkunnawaw; that is, the bear.