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THE MONTHLY ANTHOLOGY.

FOR.

JUNE, 1808.

For the Anthology.

THE BOTANIST, No. 15.

(The same subject continued from the Anthology for April.)

"The bright consummate Flower

"Spirits odorous breathes.”"

FLOWERS, says the most learned of poets, spirits odorous breathe. On what does this odour depend? The chemists give us this vague answer, that it depends on the oil of the plant. But a vegetable distils two kinds of oil, differing very much from each other; the one is fixed, the other volatile. The fixed oil is combined with mucilage; the volatile with the aroma, or spiritus rector of the plant. The fixed oil is found only in the seeds; and is confined almost entirely to those, which have two cotyledons, as flax-seed, almonds, and rape-seed; but the volatile oil is found in every part of a plant, except the cotyledons of the seeds, where it never occurs, and is distinguished pre-eminently in the

flower.

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MILTON.

far enough. This essential oil contains something more subtile and active than itself, viz. an exceedingly minute, volatile and scarcely ponderable spirit, which, when separated, leaves nothing peculiar in the remaining oil. This is the spiritus rector of the old chemists, the predominant, prevailing, paramount or ruling spirit of the plant. This spirit, which is inimitable by art, imparts that smell, taste, and medicinal virtue to that particular species of plant, and is found in no other. The fixed oil is innate; but the es

* "We are so far from being admitted into the secrets of nature, that we scarcely approach the first entrance. We overlook the operations of those invisible

fluids, which encompass them; upon whose motions and operations depend those qualities, for which they are most remarkable. "LOCKE on Human Under

standing. Vol. II. p. 207.

+ What Locke calls QUALITIES, some of the ancients called FORMS.

sential oil is the vegetable economy, operating in perfect health, and in full perfection, while drawing its sustentation from the earth, and from the air. The essential oils of plants have their respective charac. teristicks from these aroma, or spirits alone; the volatile oil, serves, in some degree, for enveloping, arresting and preventing a too sudden and copious expenditure of them; while the fixed oil serves only for connecting the solid parts together, like the oil or fat in animals. The difference therefore of these two oils is very wide.

Should any one object, that, by fixing our eyes too intently on the poetical phrase of Milton, we have strayed from the enlightened path of modern chemistry into a thicket of fragrant flowers, and are there stupified and bewildered, we answer, that it may be so, notwithstanding the limits which we assign to the meaning of the term spirit. We mean by it the finest and most subtle parts of bodies; the most active part of matter, with regard to its facility of motion, in comparison with the grosser parts; that which is discoverable by the smartness to the smell, and which rises first in distillation. The name of "spirit" was formerly given to any subtle volatile substance, that exhaled from bodies in a given degree of heat; and by a sort of imaginary analogy, was transferred to the human system; hence the term animal spirits, which was ingeniously supposed to reside in the nervous fluid, as the spiritus rector resides in the essential oil of plants.

If the term spirit, or spiritus rector, should displease the fastidious cri

* See the effects of flowers on the human system, when in a confined place, in our thirteenth number.

tick, we would remind him, that spirit, in the German language, is geist, or as Juncker has it gascht, whence is derived the English word ghost, or spirit; and hence our fashionable chemical word gas, or gaz, by which we are to understand "an exceedingly rare, highly elastick, and invisible fluid, not condensible by cold." Should the critick persist in refusing his imprimatur to the term spirit, we will compound with him, by giving him, in its stead, the word quintessence, by which we mean the specifick essence, the active principle, by the power of which medicines operate. 'Tis the distinguishing part of medicinal simples, which can be separated, in imagination, from the tangible body, leaving its organization entire. To be still more particular. The ancient philosophers and the old chemists conceived that fire, air, water and earth, contributed to the composition of all vegetables; to all which was added, a fifth thing, or ens, which enriched and distinguished the whole, by its own particular efficacy; and on which the odour, taste and virtue of each plant depended: they, therefore, asserted, that each species of plants was made up of the four common elements; but to these was added a fifth, which, though small in quantity, was the most powerful, efficacious, and predominant of its ingredients: this, therefore, they called the fifth essence, or, as expressed in Latin, the quinta essentia. The knowledge of quintessences was considered, two hundred years ago, as the utmost bounds of chemical perfection. Is not this precisely the case, at present, with the knowledge of gasses, or spirits?

We have said, that all aromatick plants contain a volatile oil; but this aromatick oil does not reside in the same part in every kind of plant,

Sometimes we find it distributed through the whole plant, as in the Bohemian angelica; sometimes it exists only in the bark, as in cinnamon. Balm, mint, rosemary, and wormwood, contain their essential oil in their leaves and stems; while the Elecampane and Florentine iris deposit it in their roots. All the terebinthenate, or resin-bearing trees, have it in their young branches, while the thamomile and the rose have it in their petals. Many fruits contain it throughout their whole substance, as pepper and juniper. Oranges and lemons contain it in their rind or peel.* The nutmeg tree bears its essential oil in the nut, and its imme diate envelopement. The seeds of the umbelliferous plants, such as fennel, cummin, and anise, have the vesicles of essential oil along the projecting lines upon their skin.

The taste of volatile, or essential oils, is hot; but it is remarkable, that the taste of the plant does not always influence that of its essential oil; for the oil of pepper has no extraordinary acrimony; and that which is obtained from wormwood is not bitter and so of colour, the oil of red roses is white; the oil of lavender yellow; of chamomile a fine blue; that of parsley a bright green; that of millefoil a sea-green. This is the valuable part of Botany; which, if diligently pursued in this country, will shew the subordinate rank of the nomenclatureship of the science, and the knowledge of the external forms of plants merely. Classifiers have almost led the world to forget the great use and end of Botany. Far be it, however, from

If a lump of sugar be rubbed against the oil-containing-vesicles of the orange, or lemon, it imbibes the volatile oil, and forms a pleasant oleo-sacharum, soluble in

water.

the Botanist to speak slightly of the pleasure derived from the sight of an elegant plant. Amidst "the insatiable variety of nature," * few are its productions that can be placed in competition with a beautiful and fragrant flower. The most brilliant gem but dazzles the eye with its splendour; while the blind man is regaled with the fragrance of the rose, the lily, and the jessamine.

may

The attempt to describe by words what, in truth, requires the faithful pencil of a Flemish painter, may well be deemed a futile task. Who would attempt to describe "the gay carnation?" Even throw his pencil by, in despair of imitating the violet or the apple blossom. What colours on the painter's pallet can express the richness of the Amaryllis foramsissima or the Superbia gloriosa, or the Dodecatheon of Linnæus? Who could hope to succeed in the description of the Strelitzia Regina, adorned, as it is, "with purple, azure, and specked with gold?" or the Ixora coccinea, the cluster of whose flowers are so brilliant, that they resemble burning coals? If the painter can give but a faint resemblance of the violet, or the passion-flower, or the Chalcedonian lily, what would he say, if requested to express, with his colours, the CACTUS GRANDIFLORUS, or night-blowing Ceres ! This stately flower is a native of Vera Cruz.

It expands a most beautiful corol of nearly a foot in diameter; and has twenty stamina surrounding one pistillum. The inside of the calyx is a splendid yellow, the

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petals of the purest white; but viewing it in front, so as to look into its deep bell, with its long trembling stamina, baffles all description; for its colour, in one shade, is fire-red; and viewed in another light, it resembles the blaze of a furnace, or burning nitre. We may remark generally, that the most splendid flowers are of the shortest duration thus this grand flower, expands its beautiful corol, and diffuses a fragrant odour, for a few hours in the night; and then closes to open no more. It generally opens about eight o'clock in the evening, and closes before sun rise; and the next day, this short-lived belle resembles a dingy, wilted husk of corn.

:

The first time the Botanist gazed at this transient beauty, and saw its sudden change, it was with sensations he never can forget: he confesses, that, in the vast assemblage of flowers that adorn the earth, this flaunting beauty caught his eye, and excited strongly his youthful admiration. Well might the poetical DARWIN say of his "refulgent Cerea,"

"Bright as the blush of rising morn she warms

The dull cold eye of midnight with her charms;

There to the skies she lifts her pencill'd brows,

Opes her fair lips, and breathes her vir

gin vows;

Eyes the white zenith; counts the suns, that roll

Their distant fires, and blaze around the

pole;

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The Botanist, nevertheless, cannot, will not, suffer her to rival in his affection, his "blushing ROSE veiled in a cloud of fragrance,Ӡ whose qualities are often disregarded because common. QUEEN of Flowers! where is the poet that has not celebrated thy beauties? where the painter that has not aimed to imitate thee? and who that has senses does not wish to take to his bosom "the fresh blown ROSES wash'd in dew?" Of the beautiful sex we fondly compare the most beautiful to flowers. Were I then to renew my youth, and to live over again; and were I disposed to ransack creation for a comparison-I should compare- -But-why this vain wish; this melancholy reflection !

"No more the summer of my life remains,

My autumn's lengthening evenings chill my veins!

Down the bleak stream of years
Wing'd on, I hasten to the tomb's re-

pose,

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RETROSPECT OF FRENCH LITERATURE.

THE following is a letter from a Prussian nobleman at Paris to his friend at Berlin, written in the beginning of 1789, &c. containing an

account of the men of letters residing in the former capital, the academies, the spectacles, &c. &c.

"I am at Paris: the very name

is so connected with great objects, and such delightful recollections, that my ideas are confounded, and I am scarcely able to contemplate the dazzling spectacle, which this superb city presents to my imagination. Since the distant period, when "four oxen paraded the indolent monarch through the streets of Paris," until the splendid age of Louis XIV. when Perault decorated the front of the Louvre; Le Brun and Le Seur animated the canvas; Mo. liere made both court and city laugh at their own expense; Boileau lashed with his satirical scourge all the bad authors of his time; La Fontaine aspired to and obtained immortality; Racine surprised in the inmost folds of the heart the true language of the passions; Bossuet, after having dragged man along the tombs, elevated him to heaven in a car of fire; Fenelon, nourished with the milk of the ancients, squandered useful lessons on kings; or the melancholy, but profound Pascal sounded the depth of our ignorance; from the Gothick magnificence of Dagobert, until the time when the great Condé wept at the verses of the great Corneille, and when nature exhausted herself, as it were, in assembling men of genius around the throne of Louis, what a series of interesting personages, and memorable events, of which Paris has been at once the cradle and the theatre, the very remembrance of which animates all the streets, edifices, and even the foot paths.

"What friend of humanity can survey the statue of Henry IV. without saluting it with a tender veneration! what secret horrour must not one experience while passing through the Rue de la Féronnèrie, where this good king was assassinated. The Louvre, the Hotel de Bourbon, le Ceveau, and le

Caffé Procope,* the spots on which great events have been acted, and where they have been celebrated, excite our sensibility, and combine the association of moral and local ideas.

"Pardon me this burst of enthusiasm. I return to you, my dear friend: you do not love politicks; in the arts, you pretend not to be a connoisseur; literature alone interests you, and it is relative to it that I am now about to write to you.

"The present is scarcely a favourable moment of literature. The French live on their past glory, in the same manner that a merchant without any money lives on his credit. Debauchery, which ever since the time of the regency, occupied the place of gallantry, the precious remnant of the days of chivalry, has equally depraved the taste and the morals. The ladies have become judges of literature, and placed themselves on the throne of criticism; formed as they are, to seize the delicate shades of sentiment, and decide on sallies of wit, they are not equally calculated to appreciate profund meditation, and the burning energy of real eloquence. What is grand therefore, is no longer known; and what is pretty is alone cultivated. The dissipated lives of men of letters bereaves them of the time necessary for great works, while it deprives them of that peculiar turn of mind, which conveys a colour of originality to their writings.

"The writers of the last age, closely following the steps of the ancients, have seized those simple and striking features, which characterise true beauty; their descendants have wished to excel them, but they have fallen into turgidity and exaggeration.

Where the man of letters and men of wit were accustomed to assemble.

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