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.
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