IN PRAISE OF CLIMBING PLANTS. 381 



And lastly, from Shakespeare : 



" And leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, 

 Out-sweetened not thy breath." 



There is evidently some confusion here, and the eglantine of 

 one poet is not the eglantine of another. Sir Walter Scott, we 

 take it, is thinking of the wild clematis or virgin's bower, when 

 he wishes the eglantine to remain untrimmed. And Milton 

 undoubtedly refers to the honeysuckle, which, twisting round 

 the framework of a cottage-porch, tempts the neighbouring bees 

 to rifle its calyxes of their honeyed sweets. But the true eglan- 

 tine of our earlier poets seems to have been the prickly sweet- 

 briar, formerly called Rosa eglantina; now known as Rosa 

 rubiginosa. No plant is of greater value for a garden hedge, 

 owing to the delicious fragrance exhaled not only by its flowers 

 but by its leaves. 



On the other hand, the "lush woodbine," which so often 

 finds honourable mention in our poets, is none other than the 

 honeysuckle, the " twisted eglantine " of Milton. Its botani- 

 cal name is Caprifolium. 



The eglantine and the woodbine, therefore, though occa- 

 sionally confounded by careless writers, are two entirely distinct 

 plants ; the former being the sweet-briar of modern gardens, 

 and the latter the honeysuckle. 



It has been justly said by a writer (whom we have already 

 quoted), that of all the flowers which, towards the end of 

 summer and the beginning of autumn, adorn our pastoral 

 scenery, "filling the air with fragrance, and the earth with 



