Read it through once

Bramble prickles are generally curved back in order to hook or cling to the branches of other trees, but any one who has tried to force his way through a clump of brambles knows the difficulty of doing so. The loops made by the branches fixing themselves in the ground (see p. 93) were at one time given credit for healing various diseases. Children in Gloucestershire used to be dragged backwards and forwards under these loops; in Cornwall also people afflicted with boils were made to crawl under them. Even cows when suffering from paralysis (supposed to be due to a shrew-mouse walking over them) were dragged through the Bramble-loop, in which case Professor Buckman remarks, "If the creature could wait the time of finding a loop large enough and suffer the dragging process at the end, we should say the case would not be so hopeless as that of our friend's fat pig, who, when she was ailing, had a mind to kill her to make sure on her."[84] The brambles and briers of Gilead and Ezekiel were probably brambles of which _Rubus discolor_ is common in Palestine,[85] and the Butcher's Broom (_Ruscus aculeatus_). This last plant is really of the Lily family, and its flat leaf-like branches end in a sharp spine. The rabbit does not eat it.[86]