PERUVIAN HELIOTROPE. 



perfume will, after a long series of years, revive all the 

 sensations we at that time experienced. Several instances 

 of this have been recorded, and probably no reader of these 

 lines will be found who has not felt the truth of it. 



The illustrious botanist Jussieu, while herbarizing in the 

 Cordilleras, became suddenly sensible of a most delicious 

 fragrance. He began to expect that he should find some 

 brilliant flowers, but he saw only some pretty herbaceous 

 plants, of a pleasant green, from which hung loosely spikes of 

 a pale blue colour. He drew near the shrubs, and observed 

 that the flowers with which they were laden turned towards 

 the sun, which they seemed to him as regarding with 

 devotion. Struck with this disposition of the flowers, he 

 gave the plant the name of Heliotrope (the name he 

 formed of the two Greek words, rpoTrio), I turn, and ^Xio?, 

 the sun) ; the flower turning itself to the sun. 



The learned botanist, delighted with his newly found plant, 

 applied himself to collect some of its seeds, and sent them to 

 the Jardin du Roi, where they germinated, and the plants 

 thrived and put forth their bloom. The ladies welcomed this 

 flower with rapture ; they placed it in their choicest vases, 

 they called it the plant of love, and received with cold indif- 

 ference every proffered bouquet which did not contain this 

 favourite flower. It was under the high auspices of the fairest 

 and loveliest of Nature's works, that the Peruvian Heliotrope, 

 grown for the first time at Paris, in 1740, made a successful 

 d^but on that continent, and has since spread itself throughout 

 the whole of Europe. 



A very amiable lady, who was passionately fond of the 



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