SCIENCE. 187 



a plant which ought to be more extensively culti 

 vated ; bears flowers eight inches long, white bor 

 dered with lilac, sweet scented, beautiful beyond de 

 scription.&quot; 



&quot; Beautiful !&quot; he shouted ; &quot; sweet scented ! Why, 

 that is a stink-weed. If you don t believe me, just 

 touch it.&quot; 



It was. I am sorry to confess the fact, but my 

 fears and suspicions were confirmed. I had suc 

 ceeded in producing about a hundred stink-weeds. 

 There is one disadvantage about science, which con 

 sists in the difficulty of understanding it. Datura 

 and Meteloides are so little like stink-weed that the 

 common mind could hardly connect the two together, 

 although the latter have sweet-scented flowers eight 

 inches long. Moreover, I had supposed that stramo 

 nium was the learned name, but it would appear that 

 science had altered that. It was a good deal of 

 trouble to get rid of those Daturas. I could not 

 touch them, for by either name they smelt equally, 

 although not absolutely sweet. It was out of the 

 question to pull them up, and almost as difficult to 

 cut them down. During the operation of their re 

 moval they gave forth an odor which seemed to me 

 quite a satisfactory reason why they were not more 

 &quot; extensively cultivated,&quot; and which rivaled the best 



