THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 489 



The poisonous vapours which envelop the poppy and 

 nenuphar reveal their narcotic properties. Infectious 

 exhalations, precisely like those from putrefied meat, escape 

 from the flowers of the Stapeha and Arum, and thus the 

 insect, deceived by them, deposits on their calyces a car- 

 nivorous progeny which must infallibly perish. Some 

 plants emit odours exactly like those produced by certain 

 animals: an orchis of our forests {Satyr'mm Inpxinum, 

 Linn.) repels us by its goat-like stench; other plants 

 attract us by their sweetness ; thus the musk-mallow 

 {Maha moschata, Linn.) distils the same perfume as the 

 musk animal {Moschns moscMferim, Linn.) 



The perfume of flowers seems to depend w^on the 

 volatilization of an essential oil which they secrete in their 

 most hidden recesses. In some plants this is palpably the 

 fact. When the atmosphere is very still, the odorous 

 vapours collect round them, and can be fired by means of 

 an ignited substance. 



By employing very varied methods, the successors of the 

 crafty perfumers whom Mary of Medici brought to France 

 from Italy, collect the odoriferous essences exhaled from 

 the flowers, and which also saturate many other organs. 

 The otto of roses, one of the treasiu'es of the East, is only 

 this oil in a concrete state. ^ Camphor off'ers us another 

 under the form of crystals. 



^ From what Homer says, it seems that at the time of the siege of Troy, men 

 already knew how to prepare a kind of oil of roses by infusing tliese flowers in 

 an oily liquid, and it is certain that in antiquity they were cultivated in order 

 to extract a perfume from them. The Island of Rhodes even owed its name of 

 Island of Eoses to the fame of its cultivation of rose-trees, but probablj' the use 

 of this perfume was discontinued, for rose-water is not mentioned by authors, 

 and it is spoken of for the first time in the works of Aviceuna. The Orien- 

 tals, in the times which preceded ours, employed it with extraordinary pro- 

 fusion. Some historians assert that when Saladin took Jerusalem in 1188, he 

 caused the interior of Omar's mosque to be washed with rose-water, and for this 



