CRUCIFEROUS TRIBE 69 



were indeed laborious, both to the writer and reader. Matthiolus was held 

 in high repute as a botanist, and the beautiful Stocks, such as our Annual 

 Garden, Brompton, Winter, and Purple Gillyflowers, are appropriate remem- 

 brances, and have remained on our beds amid all those changes of fashion 

 Avhich aflect even flowers. The little garden flower used as an edging for 

 the bed, and called the Virginian Stock, is properly the Mediterranean Stock 

 (Makobnia). It has been found apparently wild on some sea-cliffs near Dover, 

 but Avas certainly introduced there either by human hand, or by some of those 

 aerial messengers which waft plants hither and thither. 



2. Great Sea-stock (M. sinuata). — Stem herbaceous, spreading; leaves 

 oblong, downy, the lower ones somewhat lobed ; pods rough with prickles. 

 Plant biennial. It is on the sandy coasts of Wales and Cornwall that we 

 mixst look for this rare Stock. It is night-scented, and very sober tinted, its 

 blossom being of dull purple, and opening in the month of August. It is 

 not, like many night-scented flowers, closed during day-time, but is like the 

 blossoms of tlie lime-tree, the moschatel, and the musk mallow, in which the 

 scent seems to increase as the dews of evening descend upon the petals. 

 Through the night, too, its odour is perceptible, though this is not so power- 

 ful as in that singular species of the South of Europe, the Night-flowering 

 Stock {Matthiola tristis), which is all day like a withered flower, and needs 

 the air of night to freshen it into vigour and sweetness. Linnseus named 

 night-blooming flowers /w^'s tristes, and many deserve this name in a peculiar 

 manner, like this Stock, by their dull colour. But all are not, at least in 

 this sense, sorrowful flowers; for that most magnificent of blossoms, the 

 night-flowering cereus (Cereus grandiflora), whose beauty is never revealed 

 in the day-time, and Avhose full glory of hue and fragrance is attained at 

 midnight, is of a beautiful white hue, and has a coronal of golden stamens. 

 Of all night flowers it is the queen, and its scent is far more powerful than 

 that of any plant of our country. The dawn of morning, which bids so 

 many flowers unfold, is a warning to the iiight-flower to close its petals ; 

 and Scented Night-stock and cereus are then scentless, and the latter even 

 faded. Little beauty as our Great Sea-stock may have to attract the eye of 

 the wanderer, yet its odour renders it welcome to those who ramlile forth to 

 see the moonlight on the waters. It is not on the shore that we expect the 

 odour of flowers, any more than the singing of birds. Both sounds and sweet 

 airs of the country must yield here to the music of winds and waters, and 

 the odour of the salt sea waves. Little scent comes from the cliff or sand, 

 either by day or night, save that of an occasional clump of white Burnet 

 roses, which sometimes stud the shore, or, on some rare spots, the powerful 

 odour of the night-flowering catchfly, or this large Stock. 



26. Cabbage; Turnip Navew (Brdssica). 

 1. Common Wild Navew (B. camphtris).— ^tern-leaves heart-shaped, 

 tapering to a point, clasping, glaucous ; root-leaves lyrate, toothed, somewhat 

 rough ; pods erect. Plant annual. This plant, during June and July, when 

 it is in flower, is so much like the common charlock as to be easily mistaken 

 for it. The smoothness and sea-green tint of its upper leaves serve as a dis- 

 tinction, for all the foliage of the charlock is rough. The Navew is common 



