This ornamental plant, whose splendour is of such brief duration, became, towards the middle of the sixteenth century, the object of a commercial speculation, which marks an epoch in horticultural annals. The towns of Amsterdam, Haarlem, Utrecht, Alkmar, Leyden, and Rotterdam, were the head-quarters of the new trade. The years 1634 to 1637 marked its apogee, its culmination; it was the reign of the _tulipomania_,--a malady which, notwithstanding its severity, does not figure among our pathological nomenclatures. Bulbs of the variety called _Viceroy_ were sold for 3000 florins (£235) each; and amateurs paid even as high as 5000 florins (£430) for the _Semper Augustus_ variety! Those who had not the needful amount of ready money disposed of their goods, their cattle, and their furniture. And not only the horticulturists, but the seamen, and artisans, and servants, plunged headlong, into this frantic gambling. Tulip bulbs were then as eagerly sought after as shares in the company of the Mississippi in the days of Law,--or in the South Sea Stocks, also set afloat by that ingenious financier. But it was not so much a love of flowers as a lust of speculation which lay at the bottom of this famous mania. For example, a gentleman engaged a merchant to deliver, at the end of six months, a bulb worth 1000 florins. When the time came, the price of the bulb had either gone up or down, and the contractor paid only the difference; as for delivering the wares, neither party cared about it. It was, therefore, the exact equivalent of a speculation in the funds or in railway shares. The transactions took place on the public exchanges, as well as in coffee-houses, inns, and on the promenades. They originated a fertile crop of abuses, and to put an end to them the intervention of the Government was required. However, we may cite several examples of distinguished men who have cherished a partiality for the tulip, in the better sense of the word. Among these was Justus Lipsius, the great philologist. In his garden he cultivated with his own hands, it is said, the rarest varieties, and his floricultural tastes were shared by two of his intimate friends, Dodonée (Diodati) and L'Écluse, the two most illustrious botanists of their time. But all these details, however curious and interesting, do not teach us whether our wild tulip has sprung from the cultivated germs. As it is impossible to solve this problem experimentally, we are forced to be satisfied with a simple conjecture. And, for our own part, we are strongly of opinion that the wild and cultivated tulips may, from their very origin, have co-existed independently of one another. And now to put forward a fact in support of this statement. THE HELIOTROPE.