LAVENDER. 
Lavandula vera, 
MERE word will often transport 
us into flowery fields and restore 
happy days that have long since 
fled. To many of the older sort 
the word lavender is as good as a 
charm, if,it only recalls the old 
plaintive strain of once familiar 
street music. This tame-looking, 
grey-green, stiff, sticky, and im- 
movable shrub holds as much poetry 
in its wiry arms as would fill a big 
, book; but that is no matter if it 
\ has helped to fill a heart with glad- 
Y ness, for the filling of a book is but 
\) 
Wi 
) 
a piece of mechanical trickery. A 
most famous plant is the lavender, 
as may be seen by reference to any 
of the older herbalists, more especially Parkinson, Gerarde, 
and Johnson. 
In a notice of the plant in a popular work occurs— 
what is very common in “ popular works ”—a showy but 
most egregious blunder in respect of one of the “ asso- 
ciations” of lavender. It is affirmed by the writer that 
the plant grows in Syria, and furnished the “ointment 
