eating, and who enjoy the sight of the basket (so called), made of the orange, or its cloves divided into a flower, or its rind turned into a bowl. By the bye, I hope, if ever you are obliged to eat an orange without a plate, that you don't throw its rind where it may be an unpleasant sight, and perhaps the means of a bad fall.

Oranges come to England packed in large cases, which you sometimes see at fruiterers' shops, with laths bent over the top to protect them. The pale-coated, sourjuiced lemon, which gives so pleasant a flavour to puddings, grows in company with it on Mediterranean coasts; the lime, the smallest of the race, is wild in India, and its juice is most delicious. The shaddock is another Indian fruit; and there is another kind sometimes brought here, and very large and handsome, to which some thoughtless person has irreverently given the name of forbidden fruit. I hope if ever it comes in your way you will not make nonsense about its name as I have heard of some silly people doing. Of course it has nothing to do with the real fruit of the tree of knowledge, and there is no harm in eating it, but there is great harm in talking lightly of the sin for which every one of us is suffering.

The citron was brought to Europe from Assyria and Media, even before the orange. It is hardier, and I have seen one tree growing in the open air in a warm sunny place. It will ripen its fruit in hot-houses, and is often preserved; but the chief use of it is in its thick delicious rind, which affords such tit-bits in mince pies, plumpuddings, and those cakes, all white outside, all dark inside, which on twelfth-days, christening-days, and wedding-days, are said by the wise to be too rich to be eaten. And well for the foolish if they are only allowed that "enough" which is "as good as a feast." No, I don't

call them foolish if, of themselves, they only take enough, for to be temperate in all things is part of the highest wisdom. Happy the child who does not think the citron and the plums the best part of the feast-no, nor even the almond paste. I wonder whether you and I should agree as to what the best part of the festival is!

CHAPTER XVIII

THE CRANE'S-BILL TRIBE

THE next of these plants form the crane's-bill tribe. These follow the old rule of five: five leaflets to the calyx, five heart-shaped petals, five long and five short stamens, all closely joined round the five-furrowed germ, five slender united styles, and graceful stigmas. They are called crane's-bills from their seed-vessel, from which the styles project in one long, brown, dry point, like the beak of a bird, until, becoming quite ripe, they curl up

and open the germ, whence the seed leaps out with a pop.

Their petals are most beautifully veined with little vessels, through which they breathe, that is, let the air pass. All corollas have these vessels, but they are more evident in the crane's-bills than in most others, because the texture is peculiarly delicate. The commonest of all these is Herb Robert, the pink crane's-bill, that grows in every hedge in autumn, putting out a pretty veined flower that sometimes is confused, under the general name of Robin, with the two lychnises of the tenth class, Ragged Robin and meadow campion, though a little observation will soon show the difference. Herb Robert is much more delicate than either, and has always a bright red stem, and leaves much cut and divided. The dove's-foot crane's

bill, which creeps about in the dusty waysides, has a still more elaborately-divided leaf; I would defy the cleverest cutter of lace paper to make anything so prettily-formed as its branching leaves. The flower is very small, and pale pink, and has a smell of Indian ink. The beautiful Pencilled Crane's-bill is larger; it is white, and its veins are marked with delicate streaks of lilac, while its stigmas form a beautiful tuft; but the handsomest of all is the great purple meadow crane's-bill, which is to be found in profusion in the northern and midland parts of England, though in the south, it will only grow in gardens.

The Latin name of the crane's-bill is Geranium, and this was at first given to certain beautiful large crane'sbills that were brought from the Cape, but afterwards botanists considered that the cottony wings of the seeds of the foreigners deserved to be made into another genus, which they called Pelargonium. However, the plants had become such household friends that homely people could not bring themselves to the new name, so to this day we commonly call them geraniums. I know nothing about their fine names, nor of the new sorts that gardeners are always raising from seed and sending to shows. They are very grand, no doubt, especially those that are sometimes exhibited at horticultural shows, as large as a currant bush, and covered with blossoms all round; but what I like, and look upon as home friends and pets, are the precious old plants, that have stood for years and years in some window, prized perhaps for the sake of the giver, or the old home from which they have been brought, and it may be, watered and tended almost like children by some feeble old lady who has hardly strength to totter from one flowerpot to another, to pull off their fragrant leaves as soon as they have once shown a faded edge of yellow. Or perhaps

one geranium plant is the companion and friend of some hard-working girl, who keeps it in her town window to put her in mind of the green leaves and kind friends she left far away in the country. Those are the really choice geraneys, as the children call them, far choicer than the

new varieties that are only cared for because they are new and scarce. Yet I will not say that it is not a very nice pleasure in gardening to sow the seeds, and watch whether they will come up some different kind, or the old original sort, to which nine out of ten will return, though chosen from very different plants.

The oldest kinds, from which all the rest have sprung, are, I believe, the nutmeg geranium, a very sweet-smelling one, the two upper petals red, and the lower white and streaked; the oak-leaved, which has a very deeply-lobed leaf, and a white blossom, spotted with deep rich purple on the upper petals, though not nearly so large as that fine, white, purple-marked kind which I admire the most of all the new ones; and, lastly, the dear old horse-shoe, or scarlet geranium. This every one knows for its dazzling head of brilliant blossoms, and that most delicious of all leaves, so soft, so downy, so elegantly shaped and cut, and so gracefully marked with the dark line. Even grand gardeners cannot do without it; they train it to the top of their hot-houses, or pin it down in flower-beds, so as to make it form one sheet of scarlet almost too bright to look at.

The useful flax tribe has the same delicate veined petals, with five pistils, but only five stamens; and whereas the crane's-bills are all red, this is blue, except that there is a very tiny white kind, and the beautiful garden New Zealand flax is blood-red.

Flax used to be much more used in former times than