violet, buds. The buyer took a pickaxe and
uprooted them. I thought he was mad. For
jessamines torn up in full flowering in the month
of August, would in France be considered
entirely lost, and fit only to be tied up in bundles
for firewood. But this man, instead, carried his
jessamines home, planted them in the ground,
threw a few buckets of water over them, and
left them to themselves. Three days afterwards
I went to see them; they were in splendid
condition, and had not ceased flowering."

We are now wholly dependent for our finest
perfumes on France, so that when the crop of a
flower fails, as did that of the jessamine last year,
it will put the manufacturers to serious
inconvenience. It would therefore be the interest of
perfumers to promote the production of those
flowers in other countries; and the high price
they fetch in the market would make it a very
profitable speculation. It has been proposed to
cultivate flowers in England on a large scale
for perfumery purposes, but the climate renders
this scheme totally impracticable. For English
flowers, however beautiful in form or colour, do
not possess the intensity of odour required for
extraction, and the greater part of those used in
the south of France for perfumery would grow
here only in hot-houses. The one flower which
might be had in abundance would be the rose,
but the smell of it is very faint compared with
that of the Southern rose. Add to this the
shortness of the flowering season, and the high
price of land and labour, and it may be safely
said that the cultivation in England of flowers
for perfumery would prove as bad a speculation
as attempting to make wine from English
grapes.

A new process of extraction, patented by M.
Piver, the eminent Paris perfumer, consists in
forcing, by means of an air-pump, a strong
current of air into a receiver filled with fresh
flowers. The air-current then passes into a
cylinder containing grease in a liquefied state,
which is kept in constant motion by a series of
disks revolving on an axis in the centre. The
fragrant particles thus come in contact with a
surface of grease, constantly renewed, which
readily absorbs the greater part of them, and
passing through a second cylinder in the same
way, those that have escaped the first become
fixed in the second, and let the air issue nearly
scentless. In order to avoid all chance of waste,
the same current of air is driven several times
again through the flowers until it has exhausted
all their perfume. The force of this current of
air is such that, although the flowers are put in
perfectly dry, it drives a considerable quantity
of water out of them, which is collected in
a receiver at the side of the apparatus. This
water, which is quite a new product, possesses
the pure scent of the flower in the highest
degree.

The most widely-known of the toilet waters
having an alcoholic basis is the eau-de-Cologne,
invented in the last century by an apothecary in
Cologne. It can, however, be made just as well
any where else, as all the materials come from
the south of France and Italy. Its perfume
consists principally of the flowers, leaves, and
rind of the fruit of the bitter orange-tree.

THE MOUNTGARRET ROMANCE.

THE romantic ring of some titles in the
peerage of Ireland has often caused amusement;
and it has been insinuated that, in the
family committee of the whole house which
is supposed to assemble to select a title,
much assistance has been derived from the
nomenclature of Minerva Press novels and
highly strung Della Cruscan romances. In this
way only, can we reasonably account (it is urged)
for the chevaleresque magnificence of Guillamore,
De Vesci, Clamvilliam, Belmore, Valentia,
and Clarina. Other titles, by a sort of brand or
prefix of " Mount," betray a suspicious
connexion with that bargain and sale known as
the Union, and raise the ghost of

Lord Mount Coffeehouse, the Irish Peer,
Who killed himself for love—with wine—last year.

Now, the Mountgarrets were not blood relations,
or any relations, of the Irish peer who
killed himself for love with wine, last year. But
it must have been a thunderclap for the head
of that house when his daily post-bag disgorged
a letter which warned him that he must do
battle for his rights, for his peerage, castle,
lands, tenements, and hereditaments. For, there
were parties taking the regular steps to eject
him according to the forms of law, and eject
him as a false and illegitimate usurper. Most
likely came in the bag also, a blue-veined red-
sealed lawyer's letter from the confidential man
of business, stating how "he had accepted
service," and obtained " time to plead," and
how that from what he could make out there
was a very strong and ugly case on the other
side.

The result seemed doubtful. It was said that
the present peer's father had been first married
in a secret and irregular fashion, according to
the loose Scottish canons, and had since wedded,
according to more orthodox rites, the mother
of the present peer; but unhappily before the
death of the first wife. The plaintiff was a
cousin, son to a brother of this supposed noble
bigamist, and, on proof of the illegitimacy of
the present noble incumbent, the heir-at-law.
Things looked grave.

By-and-by, when assize time came round,
the little country town of Kilkenny, which was
selected as the battle-ground, became filled
with the usual gipsy miscellany which waits on
solemn jail deliveries. The peripatetic judges
had been "brought in" with all the shabby
majesty of hired horses and bailiffs disguised
in livery, and a solitary bugler winding lo Pæan
in the shape of a feeble national anthem. The
wandering bar, the legal Zingari, now on the
tramp from town to town, were dropping in
spasmodically. The inns were filled with a
loose jumble of grand jurymen, witnesses,
farmers, and attorneys, dashed with a sort of