bee-like, from flower to flower, now lighting momentarily upon an
indecipherable tombstone, now perching upon a rusty morion, here
dipping into crumbling palimpsests, there turning up a tattered
reputation from heaps of musty biography, or discovering that the
brightest names have had sad blots and blemishes scoured off by the
attrition of Time's ceaseless current. We can expect little from
investigators so volatile and capricious; else should we expect the
topic we approach in this paper to have been long ago flooded with
light as of Maedler's sun, its dust dissipated, and sundry curves and
angles which still baffle scrutiny and provoke curiosity exposed even
to Gallio-llke wayfarers. It is, in fact, a neglected topic. Its
derivatives are obscure, its facts doubtful. Questions spring from
it, sucker-like, numberless, which none may answer. Why, for
instance, in apportioning his gifts among his posterity, did Phoebus
assign the laurel to his step-progeny, the sons of song, and pour the
rest of the vegetable world into the pharmacopoeia of the favored
Æsculapius? Why was even this wretched legacy divided in aftertimes
with the children of Mars? Was its efficacy as a non-conductor of
lightning as reliable as was held by Tiberius, of guileless memory,
Emperor of Rome? Were its leaves really found green as ever in the
tomb of St. Humbert, a century and a half after the interment of that
holy confessor? In what reign was the first bay-leaf, rewarding the
first poet of English song, authoritatively conferred? These and other
like questions are of so material concern to the matter we have in
hand, that we may fairly stand amazed that they have thus far escaped
the exploration of archaeologists. It is not for us to busy ourselves
with other men's affairs. Time and patience shall develope profounder
mysteries than these. Let us only succeed in delineating in brief
monograph the outlines of a natural history of the British
Laurel,--_Laurea nobilis, sempervirens, florida_,--and in posting