MAY. 151 



sympathy with rural and touching images is associated 

 intimately with the Hawthorn 



" for whispering lovers made ; " 



and CAMPBELL has referred with buoyant joy to his 

 recollection of the white water lily of the Highland 

 lakes.. Even city poets cannot get up their stanzas 

 without a plant of some sort, domesticated though it 

 may be, and LEIGH HUXT recognized drawing-room 

 comfort in the feel of a Geranium leaf. 

 " And genteel Geranium, 



With a leaf for all that come;" 



which is natural enough in its place, as few fail to 

 pinch a geranium-leaf in the drawing-room or parlour 

 window to imbibe its fragrance. 



Scientific botanists have often indicated their 

 favourites as well as poets, and perhaps every student 

 loves some genus more than another; hence mono- 

 graphs of particular genera are framed, and the 

 partiality of one observer becomes of utility to the 

 general mass of students. LINN.ETTS honoured most 

 of his friends by naming certain genera or species 

 after them, and he himself was delighted to have a 

 little northern flower, " depressed, abject, and long 

 overlooked," the delicate Linncea fiorealis, named 

 after himself, and it figures in his portraits. He was 

 also enamoured with the exquisitely beautiful Trienta- 

 lis Europcea, and HALLER the Swiss botanist in like 

 manner was charmed with Astrantia major. Sir J. E. 

 SMITH felt inclined to avow a partiality for the nod- 

 ding crimson Water Avens, and the authors of most 

 local floras show a fanciful poetical leaning, influencing 

 them in favour of some plant. I think from its deli- 

 cate beauty and its association in my mind with oases 

 of bright thought, I should fix upon the Ivy-leaved 



