branched from top to bottom, loaded with its partycoloured flowers, and thus forming a most beautiful bush.”

There are white, purple, and red; striped and variegated, single and double, of each. Millar mentions two remarkable varieties:-the Immortal Eagle, a beautiful plant with an abundance of large double scarlet and white, or purple and white flowers;—and the Cockspur, of which the flowers are single, but as large as those of the former species; with red and white stripes. This is apt to grow to a considerable size before it flowers; so that in bad seasons it will bear but few blossoms.

In Ceylon and Cochin-China, there is a species of Balsam, from the leaves of which the inhabitants of CochinChina make a decoction to wash and scent their hair.

The flowers of the Balsam will be handsomer if the plant be raised in a hot-bed: in May, if the weather be mild, it may be gradually accustomed to the open air. It must be watered every evening, but gently; and being a succulent plant, great care must be taken not to let water drip on it, nor to sprinkle it on the leaves or flowers. It loves the shade, and will thrive the better if shaded from the mid-day sun by the intervention of some light shrub, as the Persian lilac, &c. The Balsam is a general favourite for the number and beauty of the flowers, their sweetness, and the uprightness and transparency of its

stem :

66 Balsam, with its shaft of amber,"

says the poet, and the propriety of the expression has been questioned; but the introduction of a Balsam in the sunshine not only fully justified its propriety, but excited surprise in those who had questioned it, at their own want of observation.

BASIL.

OCYMUM.

LABIATE.

DIDYNAMIA GYMNOSPERMIA.

Basil is from a Greek word, signifying royal. It is generally called sweet basil.-French, basilic; la plante royale-Italian, basilico; ozzimo.-Ocymum is from a Greek word signifying swift, because the seed when sown comes up very quickly.

BASILS are either herbs, or undershrubs, generally of a sweet and powerful scent: they are chiefly natives of the East Indies, and in this climate require protection from frost. They are raised in a hot-bed, but should have as much air as possible in mild weather. They may stand abroad from May to the end of September, or of October, according as the weather is more or less mild at this season. They should be kept moderately moist.

Many of the Basils will not live in this country, unless in a hot-house, but there are many that will, and among those are some of the handsomest and sweetest kinds; as the American Basil, with a flesh-coloured flower, remarkable for its agreeable scent; the Monk's Basil, a small annual plant, with a white and purple flower,—a mysterious foreigner, whose country is unknown to us; and Sweet Basil, which has spikes of white flowers, five or six inches in length, and a strong scent of cloves of this species there is a variety smelling of citron, and another of which the flowers are purple.

:

In the East this plant is used both in cookery and medicine, and the seeds are considered efficacious against the poison of serpents.

The Basil, called by the Hindoos holy or sacred herb, is so highly venerated by them, that they have given one of its names to a sacred grove of their Parnassus, on the banks of the Yamuna.

In Persia (where it is called rayhan), it is generally found

in churchyards:

"the Basil-tuft that waves

Its fragrant blossom over graves."

It is probably the custom to use it in Italy also to adorn tombs and graves, and this may have been Boccaccio's reason for selecting it to shade the melancholy treasure of Isabella. The exquisite story which he has told us has lately become familiar to English readers, in the poems of Mr. Barry Cornwall and Mr. Keats. The former does not venture, like Boccaccio, to describe Isabella as che-. rishing the head of her lover, but makes her bury the heart in a pot of Basil; first so enwrapping and embalming it as to preserve it from decay. Mr. Keats is more true to his Italian original, and not only describes her as burying the head, but makes the head itself serve to enrich the soil, and beautify the tree; nay, even to become a part of it:

"And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun,

And she forgot the blue above the trees,
And she forgot the dells where waters run,
And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze :
She had no knowledge when the day was donc,
And the new morn she saw not,-but in peace
Hung over her sweet basil evermore,
And moisten'd it with tears unto the core.

"And so she ever fed it with thin tears,
Whence thick and green and beautiful it grew,
So that it smelt more balmy than its peers

Of basil-tufts in Florence; for it drew

Nurture besides, and life from human fears,

From the fast mouldering head there shut from view ;
So that the jewel safely casketed

Came forth, and in perfumed leafits spread."

This young poet now lies in an Italian grave, which is said to be adorned with a variety of flowers. Among them Sweet Basil should not be forgotten.

And here we are naturally led to the Bay-tree.

LAURINEE.

BAY.

LAURUS NOBILIS.

ENNEANDRIA MONOGYNIA.

Greek, Daphne.-Italian, alloro; lauro.-French, laurier.

THIS Bay, by way of distinction, called the Sweet Bay, well justifies the epithet: the exquisite fragrance of the Bay-leaf, especially when crushed, is known to every one; even in our climate, where it ranks but as a shrub, and doubtless, in its native soil, where it grows to a height of twenty or thirty feet, the perfume would be still finer.

How many grand and delightful images does the very name of this tree awaken in our minds! The warrior thinks of the victorious general returning in triumph to his country, amid the shouts of an assembled populace; the prince, of imperial Cæsar; the poet and the man of taste, see Petrarch crowned in the Capitol. Women, who are enthusiastic admirers of genius in any shape, think of all these by turns, and almost wonder how Daphne could have had the heart to run so fast from that most godlike of all heathen gods, Apollo.

It is said, that turning a deaf ear to the eloquent pleadings of the enamoured god, she fled, to escape his continued importunities: he pursued, and Daphne, fearful of being caught, entreated the assistance of the gods, who changed her into a laurel.

"The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors,
And poets sage.".

Apollo crowned his head with its leaves, and commanded that the tree should be ever after held sacred to his divinity. Thus it is the true inheritance of the poet; but when bestowed upon the conqueror, is only to be considered as an acknowledgment that he deserves immortality from Apollo's children.

Spenser, indignant at the slight shown to his illustrious father, speaks in a vindictive strain of the fair Daphne:

“ Proud Daphne, scorning Phœbus' lovely fire,
On the Thessalian shore from him did flee;
For which the gods, in their revengeful ire,

Did her transform into a laurel-tree."

SPENSER'S SONNETS.

Garcilasso tells the story rather in pity than in anger:

"Strange icy throes the arms of Daphne bind,

Which shoot and spread, and lengthen into boughs;

And into green leaves metamorphosed shows

The head, whose locks wooed by the summer wind,
Made the fine gold seem dim; the rigorous rind
Clothes the soft members that still pant; her feet,
Snowy as swift, in earth fast rooted meet,

By thousand tortuous fibres intertwined.
The author of an injury so great

With virtue of his tears this laurel fed,

Which flourished thus, perpetual greenness keeping;
Oh fatal growth! oh miserable estate !

That from his weeping each fresh day should spread
The very cause and reason of his weeping."

WIFFEN'S GARCILASSO, p. 33.

This noble tree has often been confounded with the common laurel, which is of quite a different genus, bearing the botanical name of prunus laurocerasus. The Bay was formerly called Laurel, and the fruit only named Bayes; this has probably occasioned the mistake. The word Bay, indeed, is probably derived from Bacca, the name of the berry.

Thomson, as if resolved to have the right laurel at any rate, makes use of both :

"from her majestic brow

She tore the laurel, and she tore the bay.”

THOMSON'S BRITANNIA.

The Bay not only served to grace triumphant brows, mortal and immortal, but was also placed over the houses