MALLOWS have a strong family likeness, and can scarcely be mistaken by one who has acquired a distinct impression of the flower of any one of the species. The mallow is a mallow of course, and the hibiscus, hollyhock, cotton-plant, and lavatera are also mallows, for they are members of the honourable order Malvaceoe, and vary from the type of the order in only slight degrees. The corolla is more or less salver-shaped, and the filaments of the stamens are combined into a tube, which forms a conspicuous and peculiar centre to the flower. The plant here figured, which is variously known as Malope trifida and Malope grandiflora, may be regarded for garden purposes as a representative flower, and the student of botany will find it as useful as any to elucidate the characters of the Malvaceous order.

The plants of this order are all harmless, and many of them useful. Those best known for their usefulness are the marsh-mallow (Althoea officinalis) and the cotton (Gossypium herbaceum). The first, which in this country is chiefly regarded as an emollient, is in the East employed as an article of food, although it is only in times of scarcity that it acquires any degree of importance. It is cooked as a pot-herb, and eaten with whatever can be found to flavour it agreeably, as onions, garlic, &c. In Job (xxx. 1) we read of those "whose fathers he would have disdained to have set with the dogs of his flock," and whose wretched plight is indicated by their fleeing to the wilderness to "cut up mallows by the bushes." Dr. Hogg, in his "Vegetable Kingdom", says the plant "grows in great abundance in Syria," and has no doubt about its identity. But Mr. Houghton, in Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible," reads the passage thus: "They pluck off the sea-orache near the hedges, and eat the bitter roots of the Spanish broom." The sea-orache (Atriplex halimus) constitutes a very acceptable kind of spinach when cooked, but it is scarcely, we think, such a plant as a company of starving vagrants would look for; and it may be advisable at this point to quit the subject. That mallows of certain kinds abound in all parts of the world, except within the polar regions, is certain, and that they should obtain the notice of ancient writers is, at all events, highly probable. When the question of Job's mallow is settled to the satisfaction of the reader, we commend to his consideration the frequent mention of mallows in Tusser's "Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry".

The order to destroy them, to root them out, &c. &c., occurs so frequently that we are bound to suppose mallows were more abundant on farm lands three hundred years ago than now. And the question will arise, What particular kind of mallow aroused the enmity of Tusser? We should assign the honour to the common mallow (Malva sylvestris), a rampant-growing, showy, and we may even say noble plant, with purple-tinted rosy flowers of the peculiar shade called mauve, which means simply mallow colour--the Latin malva being thus softened in passing into French.

The tree-mallow (Lavatera arborea) has of late years acquired some degree of importance, as supplying a nutritive cattle-food, and a fibre suitable for the paper-maker. In a report by Mr. Gorrie, published in the Gardener's Magazine for June 9, 1877, it is stated that the seeds can be manufactured into a cake scarcely inferior to that of linseed for feeding purposes, while the fibre is equally well adapted for manufacture into paper or cordage.

The plants of this family that are especially worthy of a place in the garden are Malope grandiflora, an annual of which there are two varieties, the crimson and the white; the hollyhock (Althaea rosea), a perennial herb; the tree-mallow (Lavatera arborea), a biennial; Hibiscus Africanus, an annual with yellow flowers; Hibiscus roseus, a tall herbaceous perennial with enormous purple flowers; and the truly splendid shrub, Hibiscus syriacus, more generally known as Althoea frutex. The last requires a dry sunny position and a somewhat sandy soil to make a grand display of its white, rosy, crimson, or purple flowers--for there are several distinct varieties--but it is not very particular as to position, provided it is not over-much shaded by trees. One of the grandest we have ever seen was a tree of the purple variety, in a garden which had formerly been a sand-pit, in the Rue de Morny, Paris. The tree stood, and probably still stands, in the midst of pleasant greenery, some twenty feet below the footway, on the right-hand side on the way out from the city, and was remarkable for its great size and the number and splendour of its purple flowers.