may be, with more convenience perhaps, simply recognizable as 'Menthæ.'

3. These are, to our northern countries, what the spice-bearing trees are
in the tropics;--our thyme, lavender, mint, marjoram, and their like,
separating themselves not less in the health giving or strengthening
character of their scent from the flowers more or less enervating in
perfume, as the rose, orange, and violet,--than in their humble colours and
forms from the grace and splendour of those higher tribes; thus allowing
themselves to be summed under the general word 'balm' more truly than the
balsams from which the word is derived. Giving the most pure and healing
powers to the air around them; with a comfort of warmth also, being mostly
in dry places, and forming sweet carpets and close turf; but only to be
rightly enjoyed in the open air, or indoors when dried; not tempting any
one to luxury, nor expressive of any kind of exultation. Brides do not deck
themselves with thyme, nor do we wreathe triumphal arches with mint.

4. It is most notable, also, farther, that none of these flowers have any
extreme beauty in colour. The blue sage is the only one of vivid hue at
all; and we never think of it as for a moment comparable to the violet or
bluebell: thyme is unnoticed beside heath, and many of the other purple
varieties of the group are almost dark and sad coloured among the flowers
of summer; while, so far from gaining beauty on closer looking, there is
scarcely a blossom of them which is not more or less grotesque, even to
ugliness, in outline; and so hooded or lappeted as to look at first like
some imperfect form of snapdragon for the most part spotted also, wrinkled
as if by old age or decay, cleft or torn, as if by violence, and springing
out of calices which, in their clustering spines, embody the general
roughness of the plant.

5. I take at once for example, lest the reader should think me unkind or