THE CONVOLVULUS 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
Convolvulus — Eglantine — Climbing Plants — Peculimity of 
Twining Plants — Large White Bindweed — Smaller 
Bindweed — Seaside Convolvulus — Garden Comolvu- 
luses — Sweet Potato — -Dodder — Parasitic Plants, 
On the hill 
Let the wild heath-bell flourish still, 
Cherish the tulip, prune the vine, 
But freely let the woodbine twdne, 
And leave untrimmed the eglantine. 
— Sir W . Scott, 
From some other lines of Sir Walter Scott's, in which the 
lady is bidden to twine a wreath of eglantine for the brow, 
it is probable that he, in speaking of this plant, alludes 
to that luxuriant creeper the traveller's joy, or wild cle- 
matis, or virgin’s bower, which is very commonly, though 
erroneously, termed eglantine. Milton apparently calls 
the honeysuckle by this name : 
“ Through the sweet-briar or the vine, 
Or the twisted eglantine.” 
The true eglantine of the older writers is, however, the 
prickly sweet-briar, which so often forms a hedge for our 
gardens, pouring upon the breeze the delicious odour that 
resides in the herbage as much as in the blossoms. It is 
the Rosa riibiginosa of modern botanists, and the Rosa 
eglanteria of the olden time. It is to this Shakespeare 
refers : 
