PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
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dear favourite with children, who have ever loved to collect, and 
string, and even eat its “ cheeses ”; and these cheeses are a 
delight to others besides children. Dr. Lindley, certainly one 
of the most scientific of botanists, can scarcely find words to 
express his admiration of them. “ Only compare a vegetable 
cheese,” he says, “with all that is exquisite in marking and 
beautiful in arrangement in the works of man, and how poor 
and contemptible do the latter appear. ... Nor is it alone 
externally that this inimitable beauty is to be discovered; cut 
the cheese across, and every slice brings to view cells and par¬ 
titions, and seeds and embryos, arranged with an unvarying 
regularity, which would be past belief if we did not know from 
experience, how far beyond all that the mind can conceive, is 
the symmetry with which the works of Nature are constructed.” 
As a garden plant of course the Wild Mallow has no place, 
though the fine-cut leaves and faint scent of the Musk Mallow 
(M. moschata ) might demand a place for it in those parts where 
it is not wild, and especially the white variety, which is of the 
purest white, and very ornamental. But our common Mallow 
is closely allied to some of the handsomest plants known. The 
Hollyhock is one very near relation, the beautiful Hibiscus is 
another, and the very handsome Fremontia Californica is a third 
that has only been added to our gardens during the last few 
years. Nor is it only allied to beauty, for it also claims as a 
very near relation a plant which by many would be considered 
the most commercially useful plant in the world, the Cotton- 
plant. 
/©anbraoora, or /ifeanbrato. 
(1) Cleopatra. Give me to drink Mandragora. 
Charmian . Why, madam? 
Cleopatra. That I might sleep out this great gap of time, 
My Antony is away .—Antony and Cleopatra, i. 5 , 4 • 
(2) Not Poppy, nor Mandragora, 
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world 
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep 
Which thou owedst yesterday.— Othello , iii. 3, 330. 
M 
