It is difficult to determine with any certainty, at this late time, what plant Milton had in view when he said:

"In spite of sorrow At my window bid good morrow, Through the sweetbriar, or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine.*'

Whatever it was, it seems evident from his language it was not the Rosa rubiginosa, as he alludes to that well-known shrub, under its familiar English name, sweetbriar.

Query. Did he mean by "twisted eglantine " the sweetbriar, as some will have it, or was it the dog rose, R. canina, as Mr. Meehan, with good reason, alleges is its proper name? The idea conveyed to the reader's mind from the quotation is this, that the sweetbriar and eglantine are two distinct plants, and not "one and the same thing," as they are generally understood to be.

Shakspeare also presents the same difficulty, in. the following couplet:

"Quite overcanopied with lush woodbine, With sweet musk roses and with eglantine."

That the "immortal bard" would often see and pleasantly recognize the poetical woodbine and eglantine, growing wildly about the banks of "the soft-flowing Avon," meadows, copses and hedgetows, which then "over-canopied" the green lanes and country roads about Stratford-upon-Avon in his time, is most natural. And indicative of his intense love for the picturesque scenes around him,he thus tenderly refers to a delightful spot, "I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows;" and on which imagination may plainly picture him seated, side by side, with his "heart's desire," Ann Hathaway, happy in the enjoyment of each other's sweet company, as they lovingly lingered beneath the " hedge-elms," dog roses, hazel bushes and hawthorns, which gave such a charm to the rural landscape, and beautifully "over-canopied "the primrose and violet-scented pathways which led to love's Elysian, the cottage of his betrothed, where dwelt the fair Ann.

Admitting the poet's thorough acquaintance with nature, and his undoubted knowledge of the simple nomenclature of the trees and flowers, by which they were then known, we, at this day, are nevertheless left in doubt as to whether his eglantine was the sweet briar or dog rose. And yet we may justly infer from the rambling or spreading habit of the latter, which is wont to rampantly overtop bushes of lower growth, and thus, while "over-canopying" the narrow country roads and pathways he musingly trode, was what he meant. The sweet briar, though a loose, straggling bush, often met with in wild, uncultivated places, is not exactly the kind likely to have "over-canopied" the wise and meditative man in his quiet rambles along his native ferny lanes, in beautiful Warwickshire.

The late Robert Buist, one of the most practical men of his day, writes the sweet briar and eglantine as synonyms. And in his "Rose Manual" says "the eglantine has been the theme of poets and lovers for many centuries." True, it has, and probably will be, for many more to come; or "as long as men love maids and maids love men," without ever once considering whether its name is botanically correct or not.

I believe no one is more anxious to arrive at facts than the editor of this magazine, who is ever ready to impale with his iconoclastic pen the most fondly cherished idol, no matter how long its faithful votaries may have innocently worshiped it as the symbol of truth, whenever he discovers the delusion. And, possibly, the old eglantine fetich will not be the last one to explode and expire from the prick of his pungent pen.

[In these questions great men may be mistaken, as they sometimes surely are. Burns makes the nightingale's notes heard in Scotland, but it is doubtful whether a nightingale ever crossed the Roman wall. The writer of this had as good an opportunity as ever Shakspeare or Milton had of being acquainted with the common people and the common names of plants, and it is chiefly this, joined with the French usage of this French name, which leads to the belief that some author mistakes the plant. - Ed. G. M.]