Camellia Japonica. 
(SUPREME LOVELINESS.) 
E VERYBODY will willingly acknowledge the Camellia , 
or Rose of Japan, to be one of the most lovely floral 
beauties ever introduced into this country; but, alas! despite 
its supreme loveliness , this flower, unlike its European rival 
queen, the rose, has no fragrance! 
This beautiful blossom, deemed in the poetical Blumen- 
sprache , or language of flowers of our Teutonic cousins, as 
expressing Thou art my heart's sovereign, was first introduced 
into Europe in 1639, and derives its name from a Jesuit monk, 
Joseph Kamel, or, as it is generally Latinized into, Camellus. 
It has been justly observed, that had this superb bloom been 
Greek, Italian, or English, there would have been a great deal 
said of it by our poets ; and doubtless it does figure largely in 
the poetry of Japan. Unfortunately for our quotations, but 
perhaps fortunately for their own comfort, the Japanese have 
hitherto preserved most of their good things to themselves, and 
so, for the present, can live unscathed by the fire of European 
criticism. 
Did Jean Ingelow have these magnificent floral pets in her 
poet mind when she sang: 
“ These are buds that fold within them, 
Closed and covered from our sight, 
Many a richly-tinted petal, 
Never looked on by the light ”? 
And did this same gifted poetess mean that it was the richly- 
tinted petals of these stars of evening, which uttered their 
“songs without words” to some admired human flower, at 
those intoxicating hours when a sound of revelry was faintly 
heard floating out of the heavily-scented ball-room into the 
still more fragrant silence of the conservatory?— 
