102 ODOROGRAPHIA. 
is largely grown for the perfume, which is extracted by the 
“ enfleurage ”’ process. The plant is delicate, and the crops often 
fail in consequence of late winds. The seeds are there sown in 
December and commence flowering in March. The flowers 
gathered in March and April yield the finest perfume. 
The Mignonette is a native of Egypt, and has also been found 
wild on the coast of Barbary. It does not appear to be longer 
lived in its native climate than in England, where advancing 
winter infallibly destroys it in the open air. It can, however, be 
grown in pots under glass, and reared as a perennial shrub by 
careful treatment and protection from frost; it is then called a 
“ tree-mignonette”’ and can be made to last for three years; a stick 
of about two feet long is inserted in the pot to which the plant is 
tied as it advances in height, the leaves being occasionally stripped 
from the lower part so that a stem may be formed to the height 
required. As soon as the seed-vessels begin to ripen they are cut 
off, and a fresh crop of blossom soon makes its appearance. <A 
very proliferous monster variety of mignonette appeared acci- 
dentally a few years ago amongst some seedlings in a Nursery 
at Hassock’s Gate, Sussex, from which cuttings were rooted and 
exhibited at the Royal Horticultural Society. At that time it 
much resembled the ordinary kind, only the flowers were double, 
forming little balls of minutely frmged petals. By careful propa- 
gation the strain greatly improved, the spikes developing into 
panicles more than a foot in length, branching profusely to within 
a few inches of the apex with elegantly depressed branches having 
their apices ascending ; the whole covered with double and richly 
scented flowers. The proliferous character of this peculiar speci- 
men consisted in the fact that every branch arose out of the centre 
of an abortive flower and occupied the place of a pistil; occasion- 
ally two branches arising out of the same flower. In some cases 
a whorl of open but coherent carpels appeared, the branch origin- 
ating from the middle of that whorl. Each of the branches, 
especially the lower, may have lateral ones; these also in the same 
way rise out of the centres of similarly proliferous flowers. The 
plant could not seed, but was readily propagated by cuttings. 
This handsome variety was totally unlike any of the finest of the 
ordinary kinds of mignonette and was very richly perfumed. It 
was described by the Rev. G. Henslow at a meeting of the Linnean 
Society in December 1881, and figured in that Society’s Journal. 
