1858.] HISTORY OF THE HOUSELEEK. 491 



hitherto been unsuccessful.^ Our finest garden-flowers^ our 

 Pinks, Carnations, Stocks, Wallflowers, are in the same predica- 

 ment.; they are vegetable vagabonds or bastards, disoAvned by all 

 nations as genuine natives ; nobody knows whence they have de- 

 scended. The Houseleek may be among the number, but instead 

 of stigmatizing our most useful productions, that supply us with 

 the staff of life, with agreeable concomitants to our more solid 

 dietetic dishes, also with condiments, sauces, stuffings, relishes, 

 etc., I would call all such plants cosmopolitans, — plants which, 

 like domestic animals, cannot exist but under the protection 

 of man. From Norway to Greece, a range of about thirty de- 

 grees, the Houseleek grows on walls. In the island of Gothland 

 Linnseus mentions the plant as common on walls ; and Sibthorp 

 found it on similar places in Constantinople. Some plants are 

 both mural and rupestral, or grow both on walls ard rocks. 

 The testimony of botanists is uniform, viz, that the Houseleek 

 grows exclusively on walls; if ever produced on rocks, such 

 examples are to be considered as exceptional cases. It is im- 

 practicable to discuss the question raised about the spontaneity 

 of the Houseleek. It is often planted : so are undoubted na- 

 tives. It grows on walls and roofs : but walls and roofs, or some 

 shelter, have existed ever since the existence of the human family, 

 or soon after the existence of the Vegetable Kingdom itself. Its 

 name appears in all the earlier glossaries of Europe, both of the 

 south and the north. In the ^Promptorium Parvulorum,' an 

 English- Latin dictionary of the fifteenth century, one of the very 

 earliest collections of English words, the Houseleek is noticed 

 thus, " Howslek herbe or seugrene, harha Jovis, semperviva, jou- 

 barbium ;" mxd as it occurs in Bosworth it has been known here 

 ever since the Anglo-Saxon times, or for a period of a dozen 

 centuries. If it is to be still deemed an alien, it may be asked. 

 Should a plant have a probation of more than twelve centuries 

 before it can claim the privilege of a place as a subject in the 



* The rich Oriental collections of Boissier contain no trace of our common 

 Mignionette, Reseda odorata, collected in a wild state. His words are as foUows : 

 " It is reported to grow wild in the sandy regions near Mascar, in Algeria, accord- 

 ing to Desfontaines, but no modem traveller has been able to find it there : in 

 Egypt, as is stated by Haller, Linneeus, and others ; but neither Forskalil, nor De- 

 lile, nor any more recent observer has found it there ; and aU plants resembling it 

 from that country, as far as we know, belong to either R. macrosperma or B. 

 arahica. Delile mentions Syria, but I have not seen it from that country." 



