These flowers, at the very beginning of
Spring, stud the banks with gay, golden, leafless blossoms, each
growing on a stiff scaly stalk, and resembling a dandelion in
miniature. The leaves, which follow later on, are made often into
cigars, or are smoked as British herbal tobacco, being mixed for
this purpose with the dried leaves and flowers of the eye-bright,
buckbean, betony, thyme, and lavender, to which some persons
add rose leaves, and chamomile flowers. All these are rubbed
together by the hands into a coarse powder, Coltsfoot forming
quite one-half of the same; and this powder may be very
beneficially smoked for asthma, or for spasmodic bronchial cough.
Linnoeus said, "_Et adhuc hodie plebs in Suecia, instar tabaci
contra tussim fugit_"--"Even to-day the Swiss people cure their
coughs with Coltsfoot employed like tobacco." When the flowers
are fully blown and fall off, the seeds with their "clock" form a
beautiful head of white flossy silk, and if this flies away when
there is no wind it is said to be a sure sign of coming rain. The
Goldfinch often lines her nest with the soft pappus of the
Coltsfoot. In Paris the Coltsfoot flower is painted on the doorposts
of an apothecary's house.

[118] From earliest times, the plant has been found helpful in
maladies of the chest. Hippocrates advised it with honey for
"ulcerations of the lungs." Dioscorides, Pliny, and Galen, severally
commended the use of its smoke, conducted into the mouth
through a funnel or reed, for giving ease to cough and difficult
breathing; they named it _breechion_, from _breex_, a cough.

In taste, the leaves are harsh, bitter, and mucilaginous. They
appear late in March, being green above, with an undersurface
which is white, and cottony. Sussex peasants esteem the white
down of the leaves as a most valuable medicine.

All parts of the plant contain chemically tannin, with a special
bitter principle, and free mucilage; so that the herb is to be
considered emollient, demulcent, and tonic. Dr. Cullen employed a
decoction of the leaves with much benefit in scrofula, where the
use of sea water had failed. And Dr. Fuller tells about a girl cured
of twelve scrofulous sores, by drinking daily, for four months, as
much as she could of Coltsfoot tea, made so strong from the leaves
as to be sweet and glutinous. A modern decoction is prepared from
the herb with boiling water poured on the leaves, and with
liquorice root and honey added.

But, "hark