136 illNT. 



Description. — The root is perennial, long, creeping, and 

 furnished with numerous small fibres. The stems are numerous, 

 ascending, branched, quadrangular, channelled, purplish, 

 sprinkled with recurved hairs, and about two feet in height. 

 The leaves are opposite, petiolate, ovate-lanceolate, acute, 

 rounded at the base, strongly serrated, smooth, and of a deep 

 green colour above, slightly hairy, and marked with whitish or 

 purplish veins beneath. The flowers are small, pedunculate, 

 disposed in axillary clustered cymes, forming an interrupted, 

 cylindrical, obtuse, terminal spike, with two small lanceolate, 

 acuminate, ciliated bracteae at the base of the cymes, and very 

 small subulate ones at the base of the pedicels. The calyx is 

 tubular, striated, glabrous at the base, with a five-toothed pur- 

 plish, ciliated limb, studded with pellucid glandular dots. The 

 corolla has a whitish tube, a little longer than the calyx, and a 

 four-cleft purplish limb; the segments ovate, oblong, spreading, 

 the uppermost broader, emarginate. The stamens are didyna- 

 mous, concealed in the corolline tube, with short setaceous 

 filaments, and ovate-cordate purplish anthers (often destitute 

 of pollen). The germen is four-parted, seated on a fleshy disk, 

 and supporting a filiform style, longer than the corolla, tipped 

 with a bifid stigma. The fruit * consists of four small nuts, 

 inclosed in the persistent calyx, and each containing a single 

 erect seed. Plate 33, fig. 2, («) entire flower, magnified ; (b) 

 corolla opened to show the stamens ; (c) pistil. 



England is generally acknowledged to be the native country 

 of the Pepper Mint. It is found in moist and watery places, 

 though by no means frequent, and is often cultivated in gardens. 

 For medicinal purposes, more than one hundred acres of this 

 plant are cultivated about Mitcham in Surrey. It flowers in 

 August and September. 



According to Ovid, the name Mentha, is derived from Min- 

 thes, the daughter of Cocytus, who was changed into a plant of 

 this kind by Proserpina in a fit of jealousy f. The term 

 pyfirj frequently occurs in the writings of Hippocrates, and 



* The fruit is seldom perfected, as the plant increases chiefly by the root. 



-f- " An tibi quondam 



Fremineos artus inolentes vertere menthas 



Persephone licitit ?" Met 1. x. v. 728, 



