CONVERSATION VIL 



CISTUS CRUCIFEROUS MIGNONETTE COTTON NASTURTIUM 



LIME MILKWORT, AND SOAPWORT TRIBES. 



AMONG Mary's dried plants were some blossoms 

 of the Gum Cistus, that handsome shrub which 

 drops its large white crumpled flowers almost as 

 soon as they appear, but sends forth also every 

 day others to take their place. Mary had col- 

 lected a number of the fallen blossoms during the 

 previous summer, and her father now called for 

 them as an example of the CISTUS, or HOCK-ROSE 

 tribe. 



"These plants," he said, "are some of the most 

 elegant and fragrant in the South of Europe, 

 where they abound in woods and among rocks. 

 But we have a few of their relations growing wild 

 in our own woods, and one of them is the yellow 

 flower that Mary admired so much on yonder hill- 

 side, last July." 



"You mean the pale-yellow flower, that I 

 mistook at a distance for a buttercup ; but it was 

 much more delicate, and the blossom was a little 



