MfGNONETTE. 155 



found too appropriate for this sweet little flower 

 to be exchanged for any other. By a manuscript 

 note in tlie library of the late Sir Joseph Banks, 

 it appears that the seed of the Mignonette was 

 sent in 1742, by Lord Bateman, from the Royal 

 Garden at Paris, to Mr. Richard Bateman, at 

 Old Windsor ; but we should presume that this 

 seed was not dispersed, and perhaps not cul- 

 tivated 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 Chelsea it soon got into the gardens of the 

 London florists so as to enable them to supply 

 the metropolis with plants to furnish out the bal- 

 conies, which is noticed by Cowper, who attained 

 the age of twenty-one in the year that this flower 

 first perfumed the British atmosphere by its fra- 

 grance. The author of the Task soon after- 

 wards celebrates it as a favourite plant in 

 London. 



" the saslies fronted with a rang'e 



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 



