54 FA.ICILIAS GARDEX FLOirERS. 



find it as useful as any to elucidate the characters of 

 the IMalvaceous order. 



The plants of this order are all harmless,, and many 

 of them useful. Those best known for their usefulness 

 are the marsh-mallow {Althoia officinalis) and the cotton 

 [Gossyjiimi herbaceuin). The firsts which in this country 

 is chiefly regarded as an emollient^ is in the East employed 

 as an article of food, although it is only in times of 

 scarcity that it acquires any degree of importance. It is 

 cooked as a pot-herb, and eaten with whatever can be 

 found to flavour it agreeably, as onions, garlic, &c. In 

 Jul.) (xxx. 1) we read of those " whose fathers he would 

 have disdained to have set with the dogs of his flock,'" and 

 whose wretched plight is indicated by their fleeing to the 

 wilderness to " cut up mallows by the bushes." Dr. Hogg, 

 in his "Vegetable Kingdom" (page 103), says the plant 

 " grows in great abundance m Syria," and has no doubt 

 about its identity. But Mr. Houghton, in Smith's " Dic- 

 tionary of the Biljle," reads the passage thus : " They 

 pluck off the sea-orache near the hedges, and eat the bitter 

 roots of the Spanish broom." The sea-orache {.Urijjlex 

 haliiiiiii) constitutes a very acceptable kind of spinach 

 when cooked, but it is scarcely, we think, such a plant as 

 a company of starving vagrants would look for ; and it 

 may be advisable at this point to quit the subject. That 

 mallows of certain kinds abound in all jiarts of the world, 

 except within the polar regions, is certain, and that they 

 should obtain the notice of ancient writers is, at all events, 

 highly p\obable. When the question of Job's mallow is 

 settled to the satisfaction of the reader, we commend to 

 his considerati(m the frequent mention of mallows in 

 Tusser's " Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry.-" 



