Some very funny stories go the rounds of the papers sometimes, one of which is the following in relation to the Heliotrope. It reads as if it might have originated in the fertile brain of Brett Harte:

"One day this botanist. Jussieu, was herborizing on the Cordilleries, when he suddenly found himself inebriated by the most delicious perfume. He looked around expecting to discover some splendid flower, but perceived nothing but some pretty clumps of a gentle green, from the bottom of which little capsules of a faded blue color were detaching themselves. He observed that the flowers turned toward the sun, and he therefore gave it the name of Heliotrope. Charmed with his acquisition, he collected some of the seeds, and sent them to the Jardin du Roi. The French ladies were charmed with it, and made of it a floral pet. They placed it in costly vases and christened it the flower of love. From thence it soon spread to other parts of the world, and has everywhere been greatly admired. One day, a very charming woman, who doted passionately on the Heliotrope, was asked what she could see in this dull and somber looking plant to justify so much admiration. 'Because,' she replied, 'the Heliotrope's perfume is to my parterre what the soul is to beauty, refinement to love, and love to youth.'"

Only an inebriated botanist could have seen any more turning to the sun in the flower of the common Heliotrope than in any other flower, but whether Jussieu was ever inebriated or not, he had no chance to give this a new name, for it belongs to a family that has had Heliotrope connected with it from the earliest times. Helio-tropium was the name given to a Grecian plant of antiquity, not because it actually turned to the sun in the sense taken in the paragraph quoted, but in connection with the Ovidian story of Clyte and Phoebus. The sun (Phoebus) tried to get the love of Clyte but failed. He tried and tried, but still Clyte did not return his love. Phoebus then turned his affections elsewhere, when Clyte, as in many cases of true love to this day, discovered that she really did love Phoebus. She did not reclaim the god however, and she died of a broken heart. The gods, in pity, turned the unfortunate girl into a flower - the Helio-tropium. But this plant is applicable to the story only in this way. It grows in Greece only on dry, open spots, on which the sun (Phoebus) loves to shine. But not the constant wooing of the sun god brings the plant into flower till midsummer - the summer solstice - when the summer sun turns to go down hill agan.

After midsummer the plant flowers, but the sun which has wooed in vain has now turned away, and the blossoms may be supposed to be looking regretfully after. This is all the story - no turning with the sun in its diurnal course - but in an allegorical sense with its annual one. The same ignorance of the true story of the Heliotrope has led to the association of the common sun-flower, Helianthus, with it, and many to fancy that it "turns with the sun" also. But that name comes from the resemblance of the flowers to old-fashioned pictures of the sun.

The "charming woman" story is also wonderful. The interlocutor must have been " dull and somber," or had a severe cold in the head, not to have perceived that the fragrance gave it a charm quite as much as any relation of beauty to the soul.

It may be of interest as showing the difference perhaps between English and French ladies that while the latter have dedicated the flower "to love," the former associate it with "cherry pie," which is the common name of the plant in Queen Victoria's possessions. The common name with the Peruvians is "Vanilla;" whether borrowed from the orchid bean of that name, or whether the Vanilla bean is so called from the resemblance of the perfume to that of the Heliotrope, we do not know.