242 



THE SAGE FAMILY. 



ground-ivy, and calamint. The delicious flavour of Narbonne honey 

 is ascribed to the bees feeding largely on the rosemary and other 

 Labiates of the borders of the Mediterranean; and in our own 

 country, wherever wild thyme abounds, the honey appears to be 

 similarly afiected. The species, which are probably not fewer than 

 2,500, are found in most of the temperate parts of the world, the 

 maximum of their abundance being between the parallels of 40° and 

 50° north latitude. They grow in hot, dry, exposed situations — on 

 the breezy hill-side, the ledges of the southward-looking cliff, the 

 warm and crumbling bank, loving sunshine and fresh air ; occasionally 

 also in marshy places and by the sides of ponds. So close is the 

 resemblance of the different species in point of structure, that the 



Fig. 148. 

 Didynaraous stamens. 



Fig. 147. 

 Hedge Wound-wort. 



Fig. 149. 

 Lip-shaped flower. 



family might almost be regarded as one vast genus. Minutely as 

 they have been examined, the precise limits of many of the genera 

 are yet unsettled. Reduced to a technical form, the structure is as 

 follows : — 



Herbaceous or undershrubby plants, the stems for the most part 

 four-sided, especially when succulent, and with opposite branches. 

 Leaves invariably opposite and simple, varying in outline from narrow- 

 lanceolate to oval and broadly heart-shaped, in a few cases pinnatifid, 

 and often elegantly serrated or crenate. The best examples of the 

 crenate leaf are furnished by the betony and the ground-ivy. (The 

 leaves are very apt to be strewn with minute bags of aromatic oil, 



