Se. 
| of the garden pepper-mint, but much lefs agreeable. It varies in 
the Britifo Species of. Menih T 19r 
north of Europe, well defcribed by Bergius in his Materia Medica, but 
quite diftin& from ours, from which it may at once be known by 
its very hairy flower-flalks and calyx. It is merelya variety of the 
M. birfuta of Linnzus with the flavour of pepper-mint, of which I 
{hall prefently mention another inftance; and this being the cafe, I - 
beg leave to retain the name piperita for the original Pepper-mint of 
Ray. Of this there are two varieties, my a and £, diftinguifhed as 
fpecies by Mr. Sole, but by cultivating the living fpecimens with 
which he has favoured me, and obferving various others in a dried 
ftate, I am perfuaded they cannot be fpecifically diftin&. "The 
- old authors fuppofed them to be one and the fame, as we learn from 
the collections of Buddle and Sherard; by which alfo we afcertain 
with precifion the fynonyms of Ray and Dillenius. A Dr. Eales 
appears to have been the difcoverer of this valuable plant, and he 
tems to have firft gathered the long-fpiked narrow-leaved kind, 
fuppofed to be of-the beft quality... A ticket is annexed in Sherard's 
herbarium to the capitate variety, which afferts that “ Ray judged 
this to be the M. aquatica five Sipymbrium of John Bauhin, and com- 
pared its fcent to Penny-royal.” I think the writer of this ticket 
 miftook the plant Ray meant, which is thé common Z/z/uta of Lin- 
EI 
“nus; but neverthelefs it feems very probable, from John Bauhin’s. 
figure and defcription, that our capitate pepper-mint may be what 
the latter intended. He fays indeed nothing about its calyx, but he 
defcribes and figures the M. birfuta in the next chapter, exprefsly 
- mentioning the denfe hairinefs of the calyx in that fpecies. 
^ "No writer before Mr. Sole feems to have noticed my third variety, — 
y. It is a larger plant in every refpect than the others, with broad 
almoft heart-fhaped leaves, and long thick fpikes. Its flavour is that 
de- 
gree of hairinefs; even the upper part of the tube of the calyx is oc- 
: E cafionally 
