ADDEND, j GUM (1ST US. 31 



you feel none of the pangs that pain the 

 disappointed man, who survives you to endure 

 the noxious vapour and the blast of winter. 



The gum cistus is scarcely surpassed by any 

 of the vegetable ornaments of the shrubbery, 

 as its flowers are both conspicuous and beau- 

 tiful, from the month of June to the end of 

 August, being of the size of a middling single 

 rose. The petals are of a clear white, with 

 a fine purple spot at their base, and crumpled 

 like the petals of the poppy. The shrub 

 grows to the height of from four to six feet, 

 and spreads to a considerable extent ; the 

 foliage is of a dingy green on the upper sur- 

 face, and whitish on the under side, and 

 remains on the branches all the winter. The 

 whole plant exudes a sweet glutinous sub- 

 stance in warm weather, which has a very 

 strong balsamic scent, and perfumes the air to 

 a great distance. Mr. Swinburn remarks, thai 

 the cistus, which grows in great abundance 

 in the waste lands of Sicily, exhaled so power- 

 ful an effluvium, when the sun had been risen 

 sometime, that it quite overcame him. Fable 

 informs us, that the Greeks named this plant 

 Kirfcc, from a youth named Cistus ; but natu- 

 ralists suppose it to have been so called, 

 because the seed is inclosed in a cis/a s ox 

 capsule. 



