LAVENDER. 



Lavandula vera. 



MERE word will often transport 

 us into flowery fields and restore 

 happy days that have long since 

 fled. To many of the older sort 

 the word lavender is as good as a 

 charm, if it only recalls the old 

 plaintive strain of once familial- 

 street music. This tame-looking-, 

 grey-green, stiff, sticky, and im- 

 movable shrub holds as much poetry 

 in its wiry arms as would fill a big 

 book ; but that is no matter if it 

 has helped to fill a heart with glad- 

 ness, for the filling of a book is but 

 a piece of mechanical trickery. A 

 most famous plant is the lavender, 

 as may be seen by reference to any 

 of the older herbalists, more especially Parkinson, Gerarde, 

 and Johnson. 



In a notice of the plant in a popular work occurs 

 what is very common in " popular works " a showy but 

 most egregious blunder in respect of one of the fi asso- 

 ciations" of lavender. It is affirmed by the writer that 

 the plant grows in Syria, and furnished the "ointment 



