"NOLI ME TANGERE" are brave words for a shield or banner, but with the lovers of fun in ancient Rome it was an expression of irony, and had reference to temper rather than courage, or to a calamity of the nose rather than to stoutness of heart. In later days these words had a more solemn signification in connection with pictures in Christina churches illustrative of a moving episode in the New Testament story. When the balsam was first called "Touch-me-not" it would be hard to say, but the name reaches far back in the usage of gardens.

It is a question if any balsam can be considered a native of Britain. We have, however, two British species in the books. They are Impatiens noli me tangere, the yellow touch-me-not, found in Northern England and Wales, but not in Scotland or Ireland; and the coppery touch-me-not (I.fulva), to be found only in a few places near rivers in the county of Surrey. The giant balsam, rising to the height of a man, with coarse but somewhat noble herbage and handsome purple or rosy flowers, is Impatiens glandulifera, so called because of the glands at the base of the serratures; it is a native of Northern India.

It is easy to demonstrate the appropriateness of the familiar name of this plant, and any kind of balsam will serve the purpose. When the seed-pod is ripe, a touch causes it to explode and scatter the seed far and wide. Nature has various ways of distributing the seeds of plants: some are furnished with wings, and fly to new pastures; some attach themselves to the animals that browse amongst them, while others are swallowed with herbage as food, but resist the action of the digestive organs. There are many that are discharged by the plants into space, such as those of the violet, the squirting cucumber, and the balsam.

It is common to see in half-neglected gardens great masses of the three balsams mentioned above, the consequence of the freedom with which the plants scatter their seeds from year to year. It often happens that the yellow and the purple get mixed together, and a difficulty arises as to their identification. It may be useful, therefore, to the reader if we briefly describe each so far as regards their distinctive characters.

The yellow balsam grows one to two feet high; the stems are swollen at the nodes, the leaves are pale green, toothed, flaccid; the perfect flowers grow on axillary stems, singly or in pairs, the hooded sepal ending in a long spur, which is bent back upon the flower. It is a curious fact that these flowers, which are so particularly noticeable, are infertile; the seeds are produced by minute, imperfect flowers that are seldom noticed by anybody.

The copper or orange-coloured balsam resembles the yellow, except that the flowers are of a deeper colour, spotted with reddish-brown, and the spur is very closely bent back, and slightly notched at the extremity.

The glandular balsam rises to six, eight, or even twelve feet, and is of coarse though noble growth in rich soil when aided by a rainy season. In a dry season it makes a good growth, and scatters seed freely; but it is evidently a rainy-climate plant, and makes a grand appearance in the autumn following upon a wet summer. The leaves are three to five inches long, ovate, sharply serrated, the serratures at the base being glandular. The flowers appear in clusters of three or more, and many of these clusters being closely associated, and all arising from axils of leaves, constitute a large leafy corymb or panicle. The flowers are large, and of various shades of purple; the seed-vessels, when ripe, burst on the slightest touch with much force, and the seed is sent flying in all directions to a considerable distance from the parent plant.

From the interesting family of balsams our gardens have derived a few of their choicest treasures. The very useful Balsaminea hortensis, which is the balsam of the flower garden, we have spoken of. But we should now mention two that are less known, but quite worthy of a place in our budget.

Hooker's balsam (Impatiens Hookeriana) is a native of Ceylon, requiring stove culture to insure a display of its curious flowers. These are of large size, white, with a few red stripes; the spur is long and stout, and curved in a half-circle when the flower is mature, but when in bud, it forms beneath the bud a large circle, like a big letter O.