Crackling leaves and love powders

Dr Ferrand, in his Love Melancholy of 1640, complained that silly girls still tried feats they had learned from their mothers or nurses to learn about their loves. One was botanomancy, judging by the noise that holm oak, box or bay leaves made when crushed between the hands or thrown on the fire, as the ancients had crushed poppy petals. In Gay’s Shepherd’s Week a girl spends all her money on love powder at the apothecary’s to slip into her sweetheart’s ale. Herrick gave the opposite charm, that a toad laid in a newly flayed sheepskin and tied to a man would part him from his love for ever.