APRIL 287 



is more delicious and reviving than the crushed leaf of a 

 Lemon-tree ? 



I have found my increased number of Eosemary 

 bushes a great joy. They live everywhere with the slight 

 protection before described namely, stuffed in all sorts 

 of places under shrubs. But to grow and flower to 

 perfection, as they do in Italy, they want to be under a wall 

 in a warm corner, and fairly well nourished. No doubt 

 their tendency to be killed in hard springs in the open 

 must be the reason that so many gardens, especially 

 small ones, where they are most precious, are content to 

 do without them. 



Many books and periodicals praise the old customs of 

 using aromatic herbs, but in old days the smells they had 

 to conceal must indeed have been innumerable. I suppose, 

 unless by reading the accounts of how Eussian peasants 

 live even now, we cannot have any idea what England 

 and indeed all Europe was, as regards dirt, two centuries 

 ago. Our sweet modern homes are very different. All 

 the same, how many houses are disagreeable from the 

 smell of cooking which pervades them ! Burning dry 

 Lavender, dried Eosemary, dried Cedar-wood, or the 

 essential oils of any of these, entirely does away with this 

 nuisance, from which we have most of us suffered. Burn- 

 ing things of this kind is also most useful in cases of colds, 

 influenzas, etc. Putting a piece of stale bread into the 

 saucepan when Cabbages are being boiled prevents their 

 smelling at all. This is pretty well known, but seldom 

 practised ; and the fact is, what causes the nasty smell to 

 pervade a house is not so much boiling the Cabbages, but 

 throwing the water while still hot down the sink. This 

 should never be done till the water has cooled. 



Cultivating the art of smelling has certainly been 

 neglected of late, which for every reason is a mistake, as 

 the absence of a sense is a sign of defective health ; and if 



