disproportionate surface space of bare earth amongst gay flowers, but this might always be easily clothed with musk or mignonette, or some other fragrant plant of somewhat humble character. When musk is planted out it may be left for several years, as, although it dies down in autumn, the roots live in the ground and produce a new growth in spring; but after three or four years' occupation of one spot, it is advisable to root out the musk and plant it in fresh rich soil, for it does not maintain a sufficient vigour to be useful when living in the same soil for several years.

Lavandula vera.

MERE word will often transport us into flowery fields and restore happy days that have long since fled. To many of the older sort the word lavender is as good as a charm, if it only recalls the old plaintive strain of once familiar street music. This tame-looking, grey-green, stiff, sticky, and immovable shrub holds as much poetry in its wiry arms as would fill a big book; but that is no matter if it has helped to fill a heart with gladness, for the filling of a book is but a piece of mechanical trickery. A most famous plant is the lavender, as may be seen by reference to any of the older herbalists, more especially Parkinson, Gerarde, and Johnson.

In a notice of the plant in a popular work occurswhat is very common in "popular works "-a showy but most egregious blunder in respect of one of the "associations" of lavender. It is affirmed by the writer that the plant grows in Syria, and furnished the "ointment

of spikenard" with which Mary anointed our Lord in Bethany. Let us suppose the two statements to be correct, and then what becomes of the protest against a supposed act of extravagance-"it might have been sold for three hundred pence"? The produce of a common weed of the country could never have acquired such a value, and the protest necessarily suggests that the ointment of spikenard was the produce of some far-distant land, and obtainable only with cost and difficulty. Such, indeed, is the case. The spikenard of the New Testament and of Canticles i. 12 and iv. 13 was imported into Palestine from the far East, the plant producing it being the Nardostachys Jatamansi of De Candolle, a plant spoken of by Dioscorides as the Nard of the Ganges-the Sumbul or Sunbul hindac of the Arabs to this day. Lavender, indeed, grows in Syria, for the genus Lavandula is essentially Mediterranean, but it was not the spikenard of antiquity.

The commonest uses of Lavandula connect it with the lavatory, both words deriving their origin from lavo, to wash; the plant being as much prized in ancient times as now for its refreshing perfume and cleansing properties. Herein is the secret of the commercial importance of lavender, of which immense quantities are grown near London for the purposes of the perfumer.

The common lavender (Lavandula vera) is the species grown in the Mitcham and other districts, as the oil yielded by its flowers, although not so large in bulk as that produced by the flowers of Lavandula spica, is of much finer quality, and is alone employed in the manufacture of the finest perfumes. The oil obtained from the last mentioned of the two species is rather green in colour, and is commonly known as spike oil, or foreign oil of lavender.

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