Rock-roses are often employed to grow among the stones of grottoes, or over rocks, as they require a small portion of soil for their suste nance. These plants belong to the natural order Cistinæa, which produces no other plant of any note. CHAPTER XXX. WALLFLOWER-RUINED CASTLE-GARDEN WALLFLOWER -WILD WALLFLOWER-NIGHT-SCENTED WALLFLOWER -MOSCHATEL-MUSK-MALLOW-CRUCIFEROUS PLANTS -STOCK-TABLE VEGETABLES-HONESTY-MADWORT -CANDYTUFT-CARDAMINE-SCURVY-GRASS. Not a pastoral song has a pleasanter tune I thought it delightful your beauties to find, Campbell. How delicious is the scent of the breeze, as it comes to us wafted from the numerous wallflowers, which have aspired to the very summit of the old castle's ivy-covered walls, and are gleaming brightly to the sun, and looking upward, like Hope above a tomb! Then, as the wind floats them backwards and forwards, giving a momentary lustre to some gloomy arch, they remind one of the passing smiles which can sometimes illume even the brow of care, and serve but to awaken attention to the melancholy contrast. A few centuries since, and those now ruined battlements stood in all the pride of a strength which it might have seemed neither time nor storm should subdue. Crowned with their martial warriors, tall plumes and brilliant pennons received the rays now falling upon the wild flowers; and spiritstirring echoes were awakened by the trumpet, where now are heard only the sound of aerial music, as it sweeps around the ruins. Again and again returns the "delicate-footed spring," and those blossoms are called by the lark and the cuckoo to awake from their winter sleep, and deck afresh the hoary tower, but never more shall the ruin arise to renewed vigour. But though the yellow, scented, and wellknown flower is always meant when we speak of the wallflower, a few others share with it the lofty station in which it flourishes so well. There are the handsome and singularly formed blossoms of the snap-dragon (Antirrhinum), now of a colour deep as the crimsoned purple tide which flows in living veins,--now of a pale and soft rose-coloured hue, or, sometimes of a white tint, shaded with a faint blush of pink. From out the old crevices of the crumbling stone, creeps that small flower, called familiarly mother-of-thousands, but more correctly, the ivy-leaved toad-flax. Its long thread-like reddish stems are covered with a number of lobed leaves, the under surfaces of which are often flesh-coloured; while the small flower, shaped like that of the snap-dragon, is of a purplish lilac. Sometimes the wild mignionette, or dyer's-weed (Reséda lutéola), lifts its brimstone-coloured spike above the deep yellow of the low stonecrop, whose name well implies its uses; for it furnishes a common crop to the stony surface. Its acrid succulent leaves have procured for it also the name of wall-pepper; and so pungent are they, that they will blister the tongue any one who tastes them. of On a few walls of England, though never in the northern portion of the island, may be found the red wild valerian (Valeriána rubra), called commonly pretty-betty, and frequent in gardens. Its old name was setewall; and Chaucer calls it thus, as does also the gentle-hearted and earnest poet of the Fairy Queen. Mercurie's moist-bloude, too, was one of its old appellations. The pellitory of the wall is another common plant on old ruins and similar places, and received its name (Parictária) from paries, a wall. Its stems are of a reddish colour, and it has small green flowers, tinged with purplish red. It has a singular power of attracting and condensing the moisture of the atmosphere, and is often, on a dry day, covered with little spangles like dew-drops. This plant is very interesting to botanists, because of the singular manner in which the stamens shed the powdery dust which lies upon them. This powder is called pollen, and is very conspicuous on the stamens of large |