250 THE ASSOCIATIOISIS OF FLOWERS 
with water, will cleanse linen, and remove grease as ef- 
fectually as soap. It grows more generally in the neigh- 
bourhood of villages than in any other situation; as if 
Providence had placed it there especially for the service 
of the cottager. Yet it is very little used, either from 
ignorance of its properties, or because it would require 
some cultivation to render it sufficiently plentiful for 
household purposes. It needs the addition of ashes to 
make it a good soap for washing linen; but it is of much 
service to the shepherds on the Alps, who wash their 
flocks, previous to shearing them, with soapsuds made by 
boiling this plant in water. The large fruit of the horse- 
chestnut has similar cleansing properties, and may be 
used by cutting it into small pieces, or scraping it into 
water. It has even been suggested that if the nuts were 
reduced to powder, and made into balls, with some unc- 
tuous substance, they would answer all the purposes of 
our manufactured soap; and yet numbers of poor people 
see these nuts lying decaying in their neighbourhood, and 
have no idea of making them of any service. 
The peasantry of several parts of the Continent use 
them frequently ; and the same people gather the beech 
leaves and make them into mattresses. John Evelyn says 
of this latter practice that it is an excellent one, as the 
mattresses thus filled are much more pleasant to lie upon 
than those made of straw ; and adds that they only require 
the leaves to be changed about once in eight years. He 
speaks of these couches from his own knowledge ; for he 
tells us he has often slept upon them “ to his great con- 
tent.” 
But to return to the plants of the order Caryophyllese. 
The little corn-spurrey (Spergula) is another very common 
instance of this order. It is a little white-flowered plant, 
with a great number of small fibre-like leaves growing in 
a whorl all around the stem. The seeds of the spurrey 
are very numerous; and the plant often extends itself 
over pasture lands, rendering them a valuable addition 
to a dairy-farm, as cows are much improved by feeding 
upon it. 
With the exception of the few conspicuous plants of this 
order to which we have alluded, it consists of a number 
of small plants few of which are placed in gardens. 
