THE ROCK ROSE, OR ROCK CIST.

HELIANTHEMUM VULGARE.

OUR next plant belongs to a new family-Cistaceæ. The characters of the order are that the species are shrubs or herbs with opposite, or in a few exotic species, alternate, leaves, with or without stipules, generally smelling fragrantly. The petals are usually five in number, broadly spreading, the sepals three, nearly equal, overlapping each other in the bud, with or without two smaller outer ones.

The species figured H. Vulgare, is a low under-shrub, with a woody stem; the leaves have stipules; the flowers are of a bright yellow colour, broadly spreading, and blooming from May to September. It is found in dry meadows and pastures throughout Europe and western Asia, and is not uncommon in Great Britain. The Rock Rose, or Cistus of our gardens, is a variety of this species.

SWEET VIOLET.

VIOLA ODORATA.

THE Sweet Violet is a favourite with everybody, and scarcely requires description to be recognized. It is, however, interesting to know that it belongs to the family Violacea, and to the only European genus of that family. It has five petals of unequal shape

and size, the lower one being drawn out into a kind of spur. There are five sepals, and the stamens are connected together; two of them with curious ear-like appendages. The flowers are of a purplish colour nodding. On the stem we have an example of what are called bracts. The leaves grow at the base of the plant, with rather long stalks, and are broadly heartshaped. There are several British species of this genus, but our sweet-scented violet, and the pretty blue dog-violet, which is inodorous but very attractive, are those most worthy of notice. Who does not welcome the first violets in the early spring, "gleaming like amethysts in the dewy moss;" and there is no land where these pretty flowers grow in which their praises have not been sung. We must all have felt the power of perfumes in recalling to the memory images and scenes of past years, before these lines were written

"The smell of violets hidden in the grass

Poureth back into my empty soul and frame
The times when I remember to have been
Joyful and free from blame."

TENNYSON.

Not only is the violet celebrated for its beauty, but for its uses and for its mystic powers. Violet roots and violet flowers have been used as remedies in all sorts of diseases. The Athenians were noted for their love of these flowers, and they were reputed to "moderate anger," to procure sleep, and to comfort and strengthen the heart. At the present time the

root is used as an emetic. Pliny prescribes a liniment of violet roots and vinegar for gout and disorders of the spleen. The violet is certainly a classical plant. It was a favourite with the old Greeks. Homer and Virgil both mention it frequently, and Shakespeare alludes to a very old superstition, when he says,—

"Lay her i' the earth,

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring."

HEART'S EASE.

VIOLA TRICOLOR.

THE old English names for this pretty flower are various. It is called in Warwickshire to this time. "Love in Idleness," in other places" Pansy," " Kit run the Street," and "Herb Trinity"; but its common name Heart's Ease, from its supposed potency in love charms, seems to us the most appropriate. It belongs to the natural order, Violacea, as does its sweetscented and more modest relative. It is very common in Scotland and the north of England, and although described by botanists as an annual, it is occasionally perennial. The Heart's Ease is considered sacred to St. Valentine, and an old writer says, "while they are fresh and green they are cold and moist under the influence of Venus." We read of the Heart's Ease or

Pansy in Shakespeare' on several occasions—poor Ophelia, in her half-crazed love-lorn wanderings, gives away a handful of these pretty flowers, saying,—

"There's Pansies, that's for thoughts."

The wonder-working "little western flower," which so bewitched the Queen of the Fairies in the 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' is thought by critics to be this same Heart's Ease :—

"Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:

It fell upon a little western flower,—

Before milk white, now purple with Love's wound,

And maidens call it, Love in Idleness.

Fetch me that flower; the herb I showed thee once :
The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid,

Will make or man or woman madly dote

Upon the next live creature that it sees."

This plant is no exception to the general rule, that in nearly every vegetable product some one has discovered some property which they consider medically valuable. A decoction of it has been recommended to be taken in skin diseases, and poultices made of the leaves are supposed to be efficacious if applied externally. As a cultivated garden plant Viola Tricolor is very successful, and is well known. It is one of the few British plants that repays the gardener for cultivation, and is a favourite flower in all exhibitions of horticultural skill.

SUNDEW.

DROSERA ROTUNDIFOLIA.

A VERY pretty and curious little plant is the Sundew, or Drosera Rotundifolia; and it is found where we should least look for beauty: in bogs and morasses, in the damp corners of heaths and wildernesses, we descry the ruby points of the leaves of this lovely little plant sparkling amid emerald-green moss-tufts. It is the type of the family Droseracea, and is now known to be nearly related to the curious plant Dionæa, Venus' Fly-Trap, whose strange meat-eating propensities have lately been fully discussed and described by several naturalists, and have given rise to many interesting and curious experiments at the suggestion of the great original observer, Dr. Darwin. The Drosera has a small flower-stalk, from two to six inches in height, and bears on the top the few little white flowers which expand in the sunshine. The leaves grow very low down, close to the ground, and are of a round shape, and thickly covered with the minute red hairs, each of which secretes a drop of fluid, which sparkles in the sunshine like diamonds. These drops of fluid are of a somewhat glutinous nature, and entrap unwary insects that happen to alight on the leaves. This curious circumstance attracted the notice of naturalists as long ago as the year 1780; but no idea seems to have been