THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOWERS 249 



it has a curious beauty of its own, it looks scarcely 

 less sinister than the Nightshade, with its coarse 

 hairy leaves and dingy purple netted flowers. It 

 also has an evil smell. It is strange that these plants 

 should have habits so consistent with their appear- 

 ance. A rationalist might say that we have come to 

 think they look sinister because of the places where 

 we usually find them. But they would look sinister 

 in a spring meadow or a cottage garden. And there 

 is no doubt that, like Nettles, they have a curious 

 affection for places once occupied and now deserted 

 by man. They are parasites that come with ruin 

 and neglect. They seem to thrive best either where 

 man no longer thrives or where he has never been; 

 and, perhaps, when the famous New Zealander con- 

 templates the ruins of St. Paul's he will find the streets 

 of London overgrown, not with grass, but with Hen- 

 bane and Deadly Nightshade. 



A still more famous relation of Henbane, the Man- 

 drake or Mandragora, is now much less familiar to 

 us. In Mr. Robinson's "English Flower Garden" it 

 is dismissed as "suitable mainly for botanical collec- 

 tions." But Parkinson treated it with the respect 

 due to a plant renowned in literature and legend. 

 He speaks of the heady or strong stuffing smell of its 

 apples, and says that he has often transplanted Man- 

 drakes, "but never found harm by so doing, as many 

 idle tales have been set down in writing, and delivered 

 also by report, of much danger to happen to such as 

 should dig them up or break them." And he adds, 



