t is not easy to believe that our common Wild Mallow was so used, and
Jonson probably took the idea from Horace--

"Me pascant olivae,
Me chichorea, levesque malvae."

But the common Mallow is a dear favourite with children, who have ever
loved to collect, and string, and even eat its "cheeses:" and these
cheeses are a delight to others besides children. Dr. Lindley, certainly
one of the most scientific of botanists, can scarcely find words to
express his admiration of them. "Only compare a vegetable cheese," he
says, "with all that is exquisite in marking and beautiful in
arrangement in the works of man, and how poor and contemptible do the
latter appear. . . . Nor is it alone externally that this inimitable
beauty is to be discovered; cut the cheese across, and every slice
brings to view cells and partitions, and seeds and embryos, arranged
with an unvarying regularity, which would be past belief if we did not
know from experience, how far beyond all that the mind can conceive, is
the symmetry with which the works of Nature are constructed."

As a garden plant of course the Wild Mallow has no place, though the
fine-cut leaves and faint scent of the Musk Mallow (_M. moschata_) might
demand a place for it in those parts where it is not wild, and
especially the white variety, which is of the purest white, and very
ornamental. But our common Mallow is closely allied to some of the
handsomest plants known. The Hollyhock is one very near relation, the
beautiful Hibiscus is another, and the very handsome Fremontia
Californica is a third that has only been added to our gardens during
the last few years. Nor is it only allied to beauty, for it also claims
as a very near relation a plant which to many would be considered the
most commercially useful plant in the world, the Cotton-plant.

MANDRAGORA, OR MANDRAKES.

(1) _Cleopatra._

Give me to drink Mandragora.

_Charmian._

Why, madam?

_Cleopatra._

That I might sleep out this great gap of time,
My Antony is away.

_Antony and Cleopatra_, act i, sc. 5 (4).

(2) _Iago._

Not Poppy, nor Mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday.

_Othello_, act iii, sc. 3 (330).

(3) _Falstaff._

Thou Mandrake.