[074] Zephyrus.

[075] “A remarkably intelligent young botanist of our acquaintance asserts it as his firm conviction that many a young lady who would shrink from being kissed under the mistletoe would not have the same objection to that ceremony if performed under the rose.”—­Punch.

[076] Mary Howitt mentions that amongst the private cultivators of roses in the neighbourhood of London, the well-known publisher Mr. Henry S. Bohn is particularly distinguished.  In his garden at Twickenham one thousand varieties of the rose are brought to great perfection.  He gives a sort of floral fete to his friends in the height of the rose season.

[077] The learned dry the flower of the Forget me not and flatten it down in their herbals, and call it, Myosotis Scorpioides—­Scorpion shaped mouse’s ear!  They have been reproached for this by a brother savant, Charles Nodier, who was not a learned man only but a man of wit and sense.—­Alphonse Karr.

[078] The Abbe Molina in his History of Chili mentions a species of basil which he calls ocymum salinum:  he says it resembles the common basil, except that the stalk is round and jointed; and that though it grows sixty miles from the sea, yet every morning it is covered with saline globules, which are hard and splendid, appearing at a distance like dew; and that each plant furnishes about an ounce of fine salt every day, which the peasants collect and use as common salt, but esteem it superior in flavour.—­Notes to Darwin’s Loves of the Plants.

[079] The Dutch are a strange people and of the most heterogeneous composition.  They have an odd mixture in their nature of the coldest utilitarianism and the most extravagant romance.  A curious illustration of this is furnished in their tulipomania, in which there was a struggle between the love of the substantial and the love of the beautiful.  One of their authors enumerates the following articles as equivalent in money value to the price of one tulip root—­“two lasts of wheat—­four lasts of rye—­four fat oxen—­eight fat swine—­twelve fat sheep—­two hogsheads of wine—­four tons of butter—­one thousand pounds of cheese—­a complete bed—­a suit of clothes—­and a silver drinking cup.”

[080] Maun, must

[081] Stoure, dust

[082] Weet, wetness, rain

[083] Glinted, peeped

[084] Wa’s, walls.

[085] Bield, shelter

[086] Histie, dry

[087] Stibble field, a field covered with stubble—­the stalks of corn left by the reaper.