CHAP. LXXVI. JASMINA^CE^E. JASMl'NUM. 1251 



been cultivated in the gardens of convents from time 

 immemorial ; and it is naturalised in the southern 

 valleys of Switzerland, particularly in the neighbour- 

 hood of Aigle. It was so common in British gardens 

 in the time of Gerard, that " Master Lyte " thought 

 it was indigenous. It is to be found in gardens, and 

 against houses, in every part of Europe, from the 

 Mediterranean, as far north as Warsaw ; where, how- 

 ever, it requires the green-house during winter. It 

 flowers, more especially in moist seasons, or when 

 supplied with water, from the end of May till October ; 

 but, like many other plants prolific in side-suckers, it 

 very seldom produces fruit, even in the south of France 

 and Spain. This year, 1836, there are a few fruit, with perfect seeds, on our 

 plant, at Bayswater. 



Properties and Uses. The flowers are highly odoriferous ; and, though 

 they do not yield an oil, yet they are much employed, in France and Italy, to 

 communicate their odour both to oils and spirits ; and, sometimes, also to 

 powdered sugar. This is effected in the following manner : Small flasks 

 of cotton are moistened with the oil of ben (an oil drawn from the seeds of 

 Moringa pterygosperma Dec., the horseradish tree, a native of the East 

 Indies), or with any other oil not liable to become rancid. Layers of these 

 pieces of cotton are placed between layers of flowers for twenty-four hours, 

 when the cotton is removed ; and the oil, being separated from it by expres- 

 sion, is found to be highly aromatic. This oil, put into pure spirit, gives 

 out its odour to it; and the oil being separated, the spirit remains, having im- 

 bibed the odour of the jasmine. Powdered sugar, in layers, placed between 

 layers of blossoms, becomes impregnated with the odour in the same mariner 

 as the oiled cotton ; and the sugar may be afterwards used to flavour various 

 articles, either in a dry state, or in the form of syrup. In every case, the 

 article impregnated with the flavour of the jasmine requires to be kept in 

 vessels closely stopped ; because the odour soon evaporates by exposure to 

 the air. These operations may be performed with all the odoriferous species 

 of jasmine ; and, indeed, with "all odoriferous flowers whatever. The great 

 use of the jasmine, in British gardens, is as a shrub for covering walls, 

 arbours, &c. ; for which purpose it may be truly said to be invaluable. It is 

 always green, by its leaves in summer, and by the colour of its young 

 wood in winter ; and it is an abundant flowerer. Its flowers are produced 

 during the greater part of summer ; they are of an elegant shape, a pure 

 white, and are highly odoriferous. Evelyn, alluding to its flowers, says 

 that, if they were as much employed in England as in Italy and France, our 

 gardeners might make money enough of them. " One sorry tree in Paris," 

 he adds, " has been worth, to a poor woman, near a pistole a year." In the 

 present day, the plant is still a great favourite with the French. The 

 Parisian gardeners train the plants to a single stem in pots and boxes, and 

 expose them all the year in the flower-markets, where they find customers 

 among all ranks. Such is the rapid growth of this plant, that, when once 

 firmly established in good soil, it will make shoots from 10ft. to 20ft. long 

 in one season. These shoots, when of 2 years' or 3 years' growth, are used 

 in Greece and Turkey as tubes to tobacco-pipes ; and they may be seen, in 

 Constantinople, 8 ft. or 10ft. long, twisted in various ways. The plant will 

 endure the smoke of London almost as well as the ivy and the aucuba, but it 

 does not blossom so freely among coal smoke as in a purer air. In Paris, it may 

 be found beautifully in flower in back courts, and on the balconies, sills, or 

 outsides of windows, in the most confined parts of the town. A very strik- 

 ing application of this shrub is, to train it up a strong cast-iron rod 20 ft. 

 high, with an umbrella head 8 ft. or 10 ft. in diameter; and, after the head 

 has been covered with shoots, to allow them to droop down on every side to 

 the ground. This is, also, a very pleasing mode of covering the roofs of 



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