242 LILiACE^ 



Olid the name of Bruscus is said to be derived from Beus, box, and Kelen, 

 holly, in Celtic ; that is. Box-holly. The berries have a sweet flavour, and 

 each contains two orange-coloured seeds. These fruits were, in former 

 times, crushed and applied to broken bones, and the thick white roots were 

 boiled with honey or sugar, and believed to be a good medicine for pulmonary 

 disease. 



During the winter months we may often see large boughs of this shrub 

 exhibiting nothing but the gauzy network which constitutes the framework 

 of the cladodes, the whole branch being a mass of skeletons from which the 

 green part has died away. We know of no native plant which exhibits this 

 woody fibre so commonly as the Butcher's Broom ; and in days when plant 

 skeletons were much prized this shrub would probably be often sought by 

 those who made them. We may still see, in museums and elsewhere, 

 collections of these skeletons, exhibiting the arrangement of the fibre in 

 leaves, roots, and even in the delicate corollas of plants. They have mostly 

 been made by a somewhat tedious process, by macerating in water, and then 

 removing, with some delicate implement, the pulpy decomposed portion. 

 They are afterwards washed and bleached by some chemical preparation, 

 and, when properly cleaned, will last for many years. 



The art of making these skeletons is little valued now, because these web- 

 like vessels have been so often examined with the microscope, and pictured 

 by the engraver, that we can readily make ourselves acquainted with their 

 structure ; but the older botanists paid much attention to it, and as early as 

 1645 accounts of the process were published. Several works afterwards 

 appeared on the same subject ; and finally, a folio book was presented to the 

 world, containing engravings of the fibres of the ivy. Butcher's Broom, orange, 

 pear, maple, holly, white-thorn, etc. Conrad Gesner and Du Hamel are 

 among the celebrated botanists who devoted much time to the preparation of 

 these vegetable fibres. 



3. Lily of the Valley {Convalldria). 



Lily of the Valley (C. majdlis). — Leaves 2, egg-shaped, lanceolate, 

 springing from the root ; flowers bell-shaped, with segments bending back, 

 drooping, in a raceme ; rootstock creeping. Among the flowers pre-eminently 

 favoured by poets stands the delicate Lily of the Valley ; and writers both 

 of olden and modern days agree in regarding it as an emblem of modesty. 

 The unsullied purity of the snowy blossom, which, while young, is enfolded 

 in the two large green glossy leaves that through its whole groAvth serve as 

 a mantle to it ; and its lowly home in the shady glen, where to be seen it 

 must be looked for, have served to invest it with poetic interest. The olden 

 lovers of flowers, the monks, and nuns, and simplers of past times, looked, 

 too, on the plant with loving eye, believing that it was the same to which 

 our blessed Saviour pointed His saddened disciples, when He bade them 

 "Consider the lilies of the field." But modern travel and modern science 

 have swept away the pleasing illusion. Neither in field nor grove of the 

 Holy Land may the pilgrim find this lovely Lily, though many of those 

 plants which the botanist terms liliaceous grew there, and many a flower 

 which men in olden times would have called a Lily. 



