town, is the all productive genius of the place; it feeds a hundred
fountains and as many factories, and then gives life to the
neighboring fields and gardens.

The population of Grasse is about 12,000, and the flora of its
environs represents almost all the botany of Europe. Among the
splendid pasture lands, 7,000 feet above the sea, are fields of
lavender, thyme, etc. From 7,000 to 6,000 feet there are forests of
pine and other gymnosperms. From 6,000 to 4,000 feet firs and the
beech are the most prominent trees. Between 4,000 and 2,000 feet we
find our familiar friends the oak, the chestnut, cereals, maize,
potatoes. Below this is the Mediterranean region. Here orange, lemon,
fig, and olive trees, the vine, mulberry, etc., flourish in the open
as well as any number of exotics, palms, aloes, cactuses, castor oil
plants, etc. It is in this region that nature with lavish hand bestows
her flowers, which, unlike their compeers in other lands, are not born
to waste their fragrance on the desert air or to die "like the bubble
on the fountain," but rather (to paraphrase George Eliot's lofty
words) to die, and live again in fats and oils, made nobler by their
presence.

The following are the plants put under contribution by the perfume
factories of the district, viz., the orange tree, bitter and sweet,
the lemon, eucalyptus, myrtle, bay laurel, cherry laurel, elder; the
labiates; lavender, spike, thyme, etc.; the umbelliferous fennel and
parsley, the composite wormwood and tarragon, and, more delicate than
these, the rose, geranium, cassie, jasmin, jonquil, mignonette, and
violet.