102 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



shady situation. If not sown when the seed falls it may be sown at the 

 same time as parsley and lightly covered with earth ; only a small patch 

 of it will be required. 



Thy vie {Thymus vidgaris). — Common or garden thyme is a native of 

 the south-west parts of Europe, in dry plains and on hills and uncultivated 

 places free from woods. The plant is very much branched and has purplish 

 flowers. This species is cultivated for flavouring purposes, and many 

 varieties of it are to be met with in gardens. It has a pungent, aromatic 

 odour and taste, which depend upon an essential oil, an ounce of which 

 can be extracted from thirty pounds of the plant. One of the varieties, 

 Thymus citratus, is known by the name of ' lemon thyme ' on account of 

 the scent somewhat resembling that of the lemon. The best mode of 

 propagating thyme is by means of cuttings. 



Sage (Salvia), perhaps from salvus, healthy. — The best-known 

 species in this country, and that which is most frequently used, is the 

 Salvia officinalis, the garden sage. It is a native of various parts of 

 the south of Europe. It is a low, straggling shrub, with erect 

 branches, hoary with down and leafy at the base. It is much used in 

 cookery, and is supposed to assist in digesting fat and luscious foods. 

 Sage-tea is also commended as a stomachic and slight stimulant. It is 

 said that the Chinese prefer an infusion of sage-leaves to that of their 

 own delicious tea, and that the Dutch at one time carried on a profitable 

 traffic by carrying sage leaves to China and bringing back four times their 

 weight in tea. Sage-tea, with the addition of a small quantity of vinegar, 

 is a valuable remedy as a gargle for sore threat I need hardly mention 

 that sage is used also for sauce and stuffing to flavour pork, ducks, and 

 geese. 



Lavender. — A hoary, narrow-leaved fragrant plant or bush growing 

 in the south of Europe, the Canaries, Barbary, Egypt, Persia, and the 

 west of India, with generally blue flowers, though there is a white 

 variety. I prefer to spell its name as its colour, and call it lavender. 

 The flowers are arranged in close terminal simple or branched spikes. 

 Twelve species are described, of which only two are of general interest, 

 viz. the common lavender and French L. spica : both are natives of 

 sterile hills in the south of Europe and Barbary. The former yields 

 the fragrant oil of lavender so extensively employed in perfumery, and 

 the latter "oil of spike," employed by painters on porcelain, and in the 

 preparation of varnishes for artists. Our great-grandmothers delighted 

 to put sprigs of lavender among their napery and fine linen, and in many 

 houses the custom continues to the present time. It has of late been 

 used considerably in table decorations — a new use for it — and the effect 

 was very good when the colours harmonised. 



Hue. — The plant is known botanically as Ruta graveolens. The ancients 

 probably used also another species, common in Palestine, Malta, &c. The 

 former is a native of the Mediterranean regions, and was formerly eaten 

 as well as highly valued as a drug ; indeed Pliny mentions eighty-four 

 remedies attributable to it. It has long been cultivated in our gardens 

 as a domestic medicine, as ifc was formerly held in England in great repute, 

 and it is still included in our " Pharmacopoeia." It was thought, 

 doubtless from its powerful odour, to be strongly antiseptic in resisting 



