The bear is another common prefix. Thus there is the bear's-foot, from
its digital leaf, the bear-berry, or bear's-bilberry, from its fruit
being a favourite food of bears, and the bear's-garlick. There is the
bear's-breech, from its roughness, a name transferred by some mistake
from the Acanthus to the cow-parsnip, and the bear's-wort, which it has
been suggested "is rather to be derived from its use in uterine
complaints than from the animal."

Among names in which the word cow figures may be mentioned the cow-bane,
water-hemlock, from its supposed baneful effects upon cows, because,
writes Withering, "early in the spring, when it grows in the water, cows
often eat it, and are killed by it." Cockayne would derive cowslip from
_cu_, cow, and _slyppe_, lip, and cow-wheat is so nicknamed from its
seed resembling wheat, but being worthless as food for man. The flowers
of the _Arum maculatum_ are "bulls and cows;" and in Yorkshire the fruit
of _Crataegus oxyacantha_ is bull-horns;--an old name for the horse-leek
being bullock's-eye.

Many curious names have resulted from the prefix pig, as in Sussex,
where the bird's-foot trefoil is known as pig's-pettitoes; and in
Devonshire the fruit of the dog-rose is pig's-noses. A Northamptonshire
term for goose-grass (_Galium aparine_) is pig-tail, and the pig-nut
(_Brunium flexuosum_) derived this name from its tubers being a
favourite food of pigs, and resembling nuts in size and flavour. The
common cyclamen is sow-head, and a popular name for the _Sonchus
oleraceus_ is sow-thistle. Among further names also associated with the
sow may be included the sow-fennel, sow-grass, and sow-foot, while the
sow-bane (_Chenopodium rubrum_), is so termed from being, as Parkinson
tells us, "found certain to kill swine."