142 FLORA HISTORICA. 



in the library of the late Sir Joseph Banks, it 

 appears that the seed of the INIignonette was sent 

 in 1742, by Lord Bateman, from the Royal Gar- 

 den at Pari?, to ]Mr. Richard Bateman, at Old 

 Windsor ; but we should presume that this seed 

 was not dispersed, and perhaps not cultivated, 

 beyond Mr. Bateman's garden, as we find that 

 Mr. Miller received the seed from Dr. Adrian van 

 Royen, of Leyden, and cultivated it in the Botanic 

 Garden at Chelsea, in the year 1752. From Chel- 

 sea it soon got into the gardens of the London 

 florists, so as to enable them to supply the metro- 

 polis with plants to furnish out the balconies, which 

 is noticed by Cowper, who attained the age of 

 twenty-one in the year that this flower first per- 

 fumed the British atmosphere by its fragrance. 

 The author of the Task soon afterwards celebrates 

 it as a favourite plant in London ; — 



the sashes fronted with a range 



Of orange, myrtle, or the fragrant weed. 



The odour which this little flower exhales is 

 thought by some, whose olfactories are delicate, to 

 be too powerful for the house -, but even those per- 

 sons, we presume, must be delighted with the fra- 

 grance which it throws from the balconies into the 

 streets of London, giving something like a breath 

 of garden air to the " close-pent man," whose avo- 

 cations will not permit a ramble beyond the squares 



