FRAGRANT LEAVES V. SWEET-SCENTED FLOWERS. 



151 



suitable for this industry in Kent, Surrey, and elsewhere in the 

 South of England. The great European flower farms for per- 

 fumery uses are, however, in the valley of the Var, a great 

 triangular space of 115,000 acres, with Grasse at its apex and 

 Nice and Cannes at each corner of its base on the Mediterranean. 

 The flower, leaf, and fruit-rind harvest on this tract is a very 

 large one, and the various odours are roughly prepared on the 

 spot by maceration, distillation, enfleurage, or simply by ex- 

 pression, according to kinds and quality required. 



Statistics of Flower Culture in the Valley of the Var. 



Flowers, &c. 



Weight in Tons 



Harvest Time 



Orange flowers .... 



1,800 



20th April to 31st May. 



Koses 



930 



15th Jan. to 15th April. 





H7 



20th July to 10th October. 





147 



Aug., Sept., and Oct. 





74 



»» »> » 





30 



Oct., Nov., and Dec. 





15 



February and March. 



Beautiful Floweks without Sentiment. 



When we go to visit the royal and noble gardens in 

 England, what do we often find there? You will find the 

 most exquisite of tropical Orchids and other exotics in 

 damp, warm greenhouses. You will be satiated with exquisite 

 flower, form and colour, and perfume. For, after all (and 

 I hope the Orchid growers will forgive me, for I am an old 

 Orchid collector and grower and lover myself), Orchids are, 

 in a sense, what dear old Parkinson called " outlandish flowers " 

 — flowers having, like Leigh Hunt's coryphees, "exquisite bodies 

 but no souls." No sentiment lingers around them, no sweet 

 old-fashioned legend or tradition ; their perfume even is borrowed, 

 as it were, and not their very own ; and we may be said to admire 

 them rather than to love them, and when satiated with their 

 beauty we turn to the dear old Cloves, Carnations, Pinks, Koses, 

 Violets, Musk, and scented-leaved Geraniums (Pelargoniums) of 

 our grandmothers' gardens — things primaeval, as it were, that 

 peer and peasant, rich and poor alike, can grow and admire. 

 Artemus Ward used to say that modern English authors would 

 have had a good opening if the early poets and Shakespeare 

 had not said all the good things before their time ; so that we 



