MALLOW. 145 
MALLOW. 
BENEFICEITCE. 
This plant was used by the Greeks and Romans 
as an article of diet, as it is still by the people of 
Egypt and China. From this ejaculation of Job : 
“ Who cut up Mallows by the bushes and juniper- 
roots for their meat 1” we learn that it afforded food 
in the earliest times to those wandering tribes, which 
chose rather to pitch their tents in the wilderness 
and to depend on the spontaneous gifts of Bountiful 
Nature, than to dwell in permanent habitations and 
to labour for their support. 
The common mallow, the friend of the poor man, 
grows naturally beside the brook that quenches his 
thirst, and around the hut in which he dwells; and 
it borders the road-sides in most parts of Europe. 
Though it continues to blossom from the month of 
May to the end of October, yet its flowers never tire 
the eye, their petals being of a delicate, reddish, 
purple, sometimes varying to a whitish, or inclining 
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