WAYSIDE NOTES. 
2G5 
“Editor’s Easy Chair” when the periodical is enlarged. IVe can’t 
afford an “ Easy Chair ; ” to keep good, honest, but homely “Windsors ” 
in sound repair is as much as we can hope for. 
In the list of distinguished foreign botanists intending to be 
present at the British Association Meeting at Manchester, the name 
of Count von Solms Laubacli was misprinted in our last month’s 
“ Notes.” 
“Some persons preserve roses during the whole of the year in the 
following manner : they take a number of rosebuds and till with them 
a new earthen jar, and, after closing its mouth with mud so as to render 
it impervious to the air, bury it in the earth. Whenever they want a 
few roses they take out some of these buds, which they find unaltered, 
sprinkle a little water upon them, and leave them for a short time in 
the air, when they will open as if just gathered.” This extract is 
from Lane’s “ Arabian Society in the Middle Ages,” p. 163, and is given 
apparently on the authority of “ Halbet-el-Kumeyt,” a M.S. Arabian 
work of the fifteenth century. Can any reader of the “ Midland 
Naturalist” furnish a commentary upon it ? 
Another point in the same work (p. 166), and given upon the same 
authority, is as follows “ Another flower much admired and cele¬ 
brated in the East is the gilliflower (menthoor or klieeree). There are 
three principal kinds; the most esteemed is the yellow, or gold- 
coloured, which has a delicious scent both by night and day; the next, 
the purple, and other dark kinds, which have a scent only in the night; 
the least esteemed, the white, which has no scent. The yellow gilli- 
flowtr is an emblem of a neglected lover.” Now the gilliflower, or 
gillyflower, of most people of the present day is the wallflower 
(Cheiranthus Cheifi ), a flower which for many reasons is improbable. 
The stock ( Mattliiola ) is likewise known by the same name to some 
folk, and would be a more likelv plant. M. odoratissima, for example, is 
a Persian plant, with a flower becoming purplish brown when old, and 
which is very sweet scented in the evening. But the gillyflower of 
older English writers, down to Shakespeare's time, and that of South 
Europe as well, is the wild original of the carnation (Dianthus Cary- 
ophyllwt). If any faith is to be placed in the fixity of the meanings of 
flowers, themselves probably of Persian or Arabian origin, there can 
be little doubt that this latter is the plant intended, for the deep red 
carnation has attached to it the meaning of “Alas! for my poor 
heart,” the striped carnation, “Refusal,” and the yellow carnation, 
“ Disdain,” all terms very closely allied to that attributed above to the 
“ yellow gilliflower.” By the way, according to the same dictionary 
of flower language, the gilliflower (undefined) implies “Bonds of 
affection,” the stock “ Lasting beauty,” and the wallflower, “Fidelity 
in adversity.” 
This same Arabian authority gives highly respectable antiquity to 
the now-revived Narcissus cult. “The Narcissus,” it says, “is very 
highly esteemed. Galen says, ‘ He who has two cakes of bread, let 
him dispose of one of them for some flowers of the Narcissus; for 
bread is the food of the body, and the Narcissus is the food of the soul.’ 
Hippocrates gave a similar opinion,” Lilinm vivuptmnn is but a 
sample of Galen redivivus. 
In the British Museum of Natural History, at South Kensington, 
a new geological gallery has just been opened to the public, which 
is specially devoted to collections illustrating geological types and 
the history of the science. Of these, four are of peculiar interest, the 
collections of Sloane, Brander, Smith, and the Sowerbys. The Sloane 
collection was purchased of Sir Hans Sloane so long ago as 1753, and 
