HE8PERIS. 517 



"Prench Ten-week Stocks." The tlowers of these are small, 

 their shoots are thin, and they have long been superseded by the 

 sorts above described. They are hardly worth cultivating. 



" Dwarf Ten- week Stocks " are grown for ornamental purposes. 

 They produce numberless little shoots covered with compact 

 masses of bloom. 



" Pyramidal Ten-week Stocks " have very long flower-stalks. 

 They should be sown in March and July for summer and autumn 

 flowering, and should never be kept through the winter, for during 

 the cold weather they are apt to grow weakly and produce 

 worthless flowers. 



" Lavender-leaved Ten-week Stocks " furnish flne spikes, thickly 

 covered with beautiful flowers ; but their foliage is liable to be 

 attacked by mildew, and they are but little grown. 



Hesperis. 



Hespcris. The " Eocket "; a genus of Crucifercc belonging to the 

 section having the radicle of the seed bent over the back of one of 

 the flat colyledons. They are biennial or annual (rarely perennial) 

 herbs with somewhat the habit of the Stock, but usually with less 

 stellate pubescence. The generic name Hesperis is derived from 

 eairepo^;, the evening, because most of the species of one section of 

 the genus {Hespericliim) are sweet scented only in the evening and 

 at night, never throughout the day-time (D.C., Syst., ii., p. 447, 

 and Prodr., i., 188) ; such flowers are of a dark, dreary colour. 

 The most noticeable in this section, as regards fragrance, are 

 H. tristis and H.fragrctns: — 



//. tristis (Lin. Spec, 927). Xative of Austria, Hungary, 

 Transylvania, Tauria, South of Ptussia, and of Naples, about the 

 edges of fields and woods. It is from 1 to 2 feet in height, much 

 branched at the top, sometimes almost smooth, sometimes more or 

 less hispid, with long, spreading hairs. The radicle leaves are 

 stalked, upper ones sessile, ovate, acute, entire or grossly-toothed, 

 smooth or pubescent, 2 to 4 inches long ; hairs short, somewhat 

 glandular. Flowers of a dirty-white or cream-colour, brownish-red 

 or dirty dark-purple. Pedicels very long, spreading, rigid, equalling 

 the p(xl in breadth ; pods two-edged, thickened on the margin ; 



