224 ODOROGRAPHIA. 



The essential oil is very rarely distilled from the plant alone, 

 lemon peel being put into the still with it ; the compound oil thus 

 obtained being used in France as a flavouring ingredient in certain 

 cordials. The leaves and young shoots of the plants were used, in 

 combination with several other aromatics in the preparation of the 

 celebrated '' Eau de Melisse des Carmes.'' In England it is now 

 little used, unless for making a simple balm tea, which affords a 

 grateful diluent drink in fevers, and for forming a light agreeable 

 beverage under the name of " balm wine." Anciently it was 

 generally recommended in hypochondriacal affections, and by 

 Paracelsus promised a complete renovation of man. From the 

 fondness of bees for this plant, it was named Apidstrum, Melissa, 

 MelissojjJiyllum, and was directed by the ancients, among other 

 herbs, to be rubbed upon the hive to render it agreeable to the 

 swarm. 



Melissa grandiflora, Lin., Sp. 827; Bot. Mag., t. 208. Syn. 

 Thymm grandiflorus D. C. Flore Franqaise, iii., p. 562. A native 

 of Europe, in shady woods, possesses the same odour in its leaves 

 as the common balm. There is a variety of this with white flowers 

 and another with red flowers, both much inferior in odour to 

 the purple, as is also a variety with variegated leaves. 



Calami nt, or " Mountain Balm." The name is derived 

 from /caXo9, beautiful and jjLivOa mint, in reference to the beauty 

 of the plants and its affinity to mentha. Melissa calamintha, Lin., 

 Spec, p. 827 ; Syn. Thymus calamintha, Smith, Flora Britannica, 

 p. 641, and Sowerby, Eng. Bot., t. 1676. Native of Central and 

 Southern Europe and Central Asia. In England it occasionally 

 occurs about the borders of fields, hedge banks and road sides, on a 

 gravelly soil, but is seldom found in any quantity together. The 

 plant is from 6 inches to 18 inches in height, perennial, flowering 

 from August to the very end of autumn. Its stems are herbaceous, 

 branches ascending, villous. Leaves usually an inch-and-a-half 

 long, petiolate, broad-ovate, bluntish, serrately crenated, rounded 

 or truncated at the base, green on both surfaces, villous ; raceme 

 loose ; cymes very loose, subdichotomous, few-flowered ; calyx 

 distinctly bilabiate, with subulate teeth ; lower teeth elongated ; 

 corolla more than twice as long as the calyx. The plant is 

 remarkable for its peculiar sweet and fragrant scent- 



