an oblong and extremely ugly potato, of a reddish colour. When cooked they are excessively sweet, and scarcely attractive in appearance, and certainly need for their appreciation a palate trained to their liquorice flavour. When the potato of the present day was as yet unknown in this country, the sweet potato was regularly imported, and no doubt was very much enjoyed by the English people as a wholesome article of diet. Being usually of greater size and weight than the potatoes we are now accustomed to, there is a special reserve of fun in the exclamation of Falstaff, "Let the sky rain potatoes and hail kissingcomfits," "Merry Wives" (act v., sc. 5). The coarse red, fleshy root of the sweet potato is employed by Shakespeare in another place, to help out the description of " the devil luxury," "Troilus and Cressida" (act v., sc. 2). These are not the only examples of useful species of convolvulus. The Mexican plant Ipomea purga produces the jalap of commerce, and Convolvulus dissectus abounds in prussic acid, the liqueur known as Noyau being prepared from it, with the aid of alcohol. Finally, and omitting much that might be said if the subject were formally set before us, it may interest the reader to know that the oil of rhodium, which is said to be so attractive to rats as to cause them to swarm to it without fear, even if held in the hand of a ratcatcher, is the produce of a convolvulus known as Rhodorhiza. It appears to be a long journey through the vegetable kingdom from our pretty and harmless Convolvulus minor to the extremely beautiful but pernicious British weed Dodder, Cuscuta epithymum. But to the botanist the transition is easy and natural, for the dodder, which by its parasitic growth of crimson stems strangles the plant it feeds on and so renders the ground barren, is a quite characteristic member of the great order Convolvulaceæ, producing minute flowers of great beauty of a true convolvulus shape. A prominent characteristic of the order is the production of an imbricated calyx, two of the sepals being quite exterior to the other three. But a still more remarkable convolvulus is the East Indian plant called Neuropeltis racemosa, the flowers of which are produced in the centre of bracteal leaves, as though a flower should grow out of the palm of one's hand, or as tiny clusters of leaves occasionally appear in the very centre of large cabbage-leaves. In this the imbricated arrangement of the calyx is found to afford a trustworthy family likeness. Jasminum officinale. ASMIN THE TROUBADOUR, who happily hails from Agen, "content and poor," makes boast of his name as allied to the "stem of Jesse." For this plant is variously called Jasmine, Jessamine, and Jesse: its Arabic name being Ysmyn, and its Persian name Jasemin. And it is a question of some interest whether, in the prophetic utterances, "the stem,” "the root," "the rod," and "the branch" of Jesse were associated with any plant that had the value of a symbol. It is not an idle question, as may be seen on reference to the tree of Jesse in the east window at Dorchester, Oxon; for however the artist may draw on his imagination in such a work, he is likely to be governed by an idea derived from a consideration of facts, and the jessamine, if admissible in such a case, is peculiarly |