THE MEZEEEON. 



Daphne mezerenm. 



MEZEREON is a dwarf olive, 

 Ijut as the plant is not an 

 olive, nor indeed half so use- 

 ful, it is proper to add that 

 the name is of Arabic deri- 

 vation, and the Arabs named 

 plants by their visual analogies, 

 and not by analogies of struc- 

 ture. It is the magzeroun of 

 the Arabian physicians, and a 

 destroyer of life, which the 

 olive is not. 



There is no flowering shrub 

 in our gardens that gives us 

 higher pleasure than the me- 

 zereon. We have indeed 

 finer subjects (according to 

 our notions), but when this 

 shrub flowers, these finer things are as good as dead, 

 because there is not a flower upon them, or even the sign 

 of a coming leaf. To speak of the mezereon as a spring 

 flower is a mistake. The hedgerows are bare, and the 

 birds for the most part are silent, or dismally twittering, 

 when the lovely mezereon is in its full glory, and inost 



