ROSE CAMl'loy, 35 



Dutch, Christes eie ; in French, oeillets, find oeillets Dieu." 

 It was also known as the rose of Mary and the rose o{ 

 Heaven. In respect of its properties, it was classed by the 

 herbalists with the thousand and odd plants that were 

 considered of sovereign use against the bites of scorpions, 

 a feature of our English writers on plants that betrays 

 at once their indebtedness to the herbalists of Southern 

 Europe, and their want of discretion in copying for readers 

 utterly ignorant of scorpions, except as revealed in museums 

 and books. 



With a woolly plant before us, we may ask, " What 

 is the use of vegetable wool ? " In the arts it is com- 

 paratively valueless, but as a part of a living plant it is 

 of considerable importance, and, a priori, it is fair to 

 assume that the plant could not well do without it. The 

 "wool," of which the common mullein affords a familiar 

 example, consists of closely-packed jointed hairs, which are 

 a veritable extension of the cellular tissue, and exercise a 

 powerful influence in the life- economy of the plant. When 

 the earth is parched and the root finds no moisture, these 

 hairs promote a copious condensation of the night dew, 

 which trickles down to the blade of the leaf, and thus 

 they serve as food-collectors, as do the tentacles of an 

 anemone or the cilia of an animalcule. But when the 

 dry heat of the day returns, they serve to protect the 

 sensitive leaf -surface from which they spring; and, in 

 fact, the " wool " is to the plant a protector at all seasons 

 against extreme conditions. We meet with hairy and 

 woolly plants in all kinds of situations ; but they appear 

 to be in a special manner adapted to the mountains and 

 the deserts, where keen frost, copious dews, and great 

 heat and drought are characteristics of the average cou- 



