12 



SPIKED MINTS. 



PL. V. 



5. SPEAR-MINT. 



THIS plant grows about three feet in height ; its ftalk is quadran- 

 gular, upright, fmooth, and of a bright green colour, being neatly 

 branched with upright fprigs, which terminate in elegant long fpikes of 

 flowers, which are of a bright-red colour, dotted here and there with 

 white fpecks in the infide; the ftamens, tipped with beautiful red knobs, 

 are longer than the bloffom. 



The leaves are long, narrow, acuminated, and deeply ferrated, and fit- 

 ting on the ftalk; they are of a grafs-green colour, and perfectly fmooth on 

 both fides; the nerves are white, and the veins obfcurely reticulated; the 

 whole plant has a moft fragrant and refrefhing fmell. Its red bloffoms, 

 fmooth leaves, and eminent ftamens, fufficiently diftinguifh it from the 

 villofa's. 



Ray and Hill, neither of them finding it wild, treat it as an exotic; but 

 our great Mafter, Linnaeus, boldly fays, habitat in Anglia; and Hudfon has 

 quoted feveral habitats in his ingenious work Flo. Aug. and I have found 

 it fpontaneous in a common between Glaftonbury and Wells; and the plant 

 which produced the fpecimen for this plate, I brought home ten years ago 

 from a wild habitat in the meadows four miles out of Bath, where it flou- 

 rifhes to this day in an old water-grip, intermixed with M. aquatica, &c. 



It alfo grows in various places by the fide of the Avon between Bath 

 and Kelfton. It flowers in Auguft. 



The virtue of this excellent plant, as a cephalic, stomachic, and febrifuge, are so well 

 established by the concurrent testimony of many ages, as to maintain its consequence and 

 repute even at this time, when herbs in general are so unfortunately, and, I may say, 

 unjustly repudiated, that it needs not to be enlarged on here. 



