for him."

"Oh! a scientific young lady--perhaps a little of a blue-stocking,
too," said the colonel to himself. "I must hash up a dish to suit her
peculiar taste. Though no botanist," continued he aloud, "there is one
plant that has strongly attracted my attention, and I recommend it to
yours; though your _hortus siccus_ will hardly contain a fair specimen
of it."

"What is that?" said she, on the _qui vive_ to hear of some rare
plant.

"It is the cork-oak," said the colonel, solemnly. "Its rough exterior
has led tourists and artists, and even naturalists, to treat it with
neglect, while it is daily contributing to the comfort, delight, and
civilization of the world."

"It may, perhaps," said Lady Mabel, hesitating, "be said to do all
that you attribute to it."

"Does it not strike you as passing strange, Lady Mabel, (_apropos_ to
our subject, pray take a glass of wine with me,) that the Romans, who
were, doubtless, a great and a wise people, should have been masters
of Spain and Gaul, and of their forests of cork trees for
centuries--that these Romans," continued he, growing eloquent on the
subject, "who had the tree in their own country, though not, perhaps,
in the full perfection of its cortical development, and did apply its
bark to a number of useful purposes, including, occasionally, that of
stoppers for vessels, should yet never have attained to the systematic
use of it in corking their bottles!"