The Arms of the Society of Apothecaries
(italicised below) is taken, occurred. Ovid relates that Apollo, meeting Cupid, jeered at his child's bows and arrows as mere playthings. In revenge Cupid forged two arrows, one of gold and the other of lead. The golden one he shot at Apollo, to excite desire; the leaden arrow, which repelled desire, was shot at Daphne. The legend ends by the nymph being metamorphosed into a laurel which Apollo thenceforth wore as a wreath. One of the incidents narrated by Ovid represents the god telling the nymph who he is. Dryden's version makes him say:
Perhaps thou knowest not my superior state
And from that ignorance proceeds thy hate.
A somewhat uncouth method of seeking to ingratiate himself with the reluctant lady. Among his attainments Apollo says:
Invention medicina meum est, Opiferque per orbem
Dicor, et herbam subjecta potentia nobis.
Dryden versifies these lines thus:
Medicine is mine, what herbs and simples grow
In fields and forests, all their powers I know,
And am the great physician called below.
The arms of the Society of Apothecaries are thus described in Burke's "Encyclopædia of Heraldry," 1851:
"In shield, Apollo, the inventor of physic, with his head radiant, holding in his left hand a bow, and in his right a serpent. About the shield a helm, thereupon a mantle, and for the crest, upon a wreath of their colours,
