are attached certain little
grains, of great sweetness and flavour. The banana-tree, "_Musa
paradisaica_," which, cooped in our low hot-houses at home, breaks its
neck, and might well break its heart, as its annual growth is resisted
by the inexorable glass dome, is here no prisoner but an acclimated
denizen of sun and air. The _Cactus Opuntiae_, or Indian fig, is here for
vulgar tastes; and the _Cactus cochinellifera_ for the Luculluses of the
day, who could afford to pay for its rearing. The small _sneezing
plant_, a vegetable smelling-bottle, is still employed in headach by the
common people of Sicily, who bruise the leaves and sniff their pungency:
its vulgar name, _malupertusu_, is the corruption of Marum del Cortuso,
as we find it in the ancient herbal of Durante. The _Ferula communis_ or
_Saracinisca_, a legacy left to the Sicilian pedagogues by their eastern
lords, is sold in fagots at the green-grocers, and fulfils the
scholastic office of _birch_; and, being more elastic, must be pleasant
to _flog with_. We recommend it to _head masters_. The _sumac_, _Rhus
coriaria_, is not only to be seen here, but every where else in Sicily;
and they say there is a daily exportation of one thousand sacks of its
ground leaves. The ancients knew it well, and employed it for giving a
flavour to their meat, as they do now in Nubia and Egypt, according to
Durante, who deems its many virtues deserving of Latin verse. We smell
pepper!--a graceful shrub, whose slender twigs stand pencilled out like
sea-weed spread upon paper; and the _Schinus mollis_, a leaf of which we
have gathered ignorantly, is the source of the smell. We strew some
leaves on the basin of a neighbouring fountain, and amuse ourselves by
seeing them swim about as if they were bewitched, parting at the same
time with a whitish fluid, which, spreading on the surface of the water,
gives it an iridescent hue. The _Fuchsia arborescens_ of Japan flowers
here, they say, every month, just as we see him in all his pink
luxuriance, and makes himself quite at home; and here is that little
blue vegetable butterfly, the _Polygala_! Who can overlook his _winged_
petals, peeping out of their myrtle-looking bower? Then the
_geraniums_!--not potted, as in Covent-Garden, or the _Marche aux
Fleurs_, but forming vast parti-coloured _hedgerows_, giving to every
pathway its own _particular flower and perfume_; so that a connoisseur
might be taken blindfold and declare where each kind g