THE HOME OF LAVENDER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11282, 9 January 1915, Page 5

THE HOME OF LAVENDER.

("San Francisco Chronicle.")

The scout of lavender always suggests piles of snowy linen, cleanliness, Ai healthly, wholesome form of sweetness. Quantities of lavender are grown in France, and it comes also from, the Far East, but the beet lavender for perfuming purposes is grown in England. There ato enormous plantations of it in Surrey and Hertfordshire, from which a remarkably line otto is extracted 1 . The oil obtained is used for perfuming soaps and for making the favourite lavender extract, generally sold as lavender water.

Oil of lavender is volatile, and will not last long, but a bottle of it is a most agreeable article for the bathroom or toilet table. Aside from its agreeable odour, it lias tho fortunate habit of discouraging insect life. Fliea and mosquitoes avoid a person whose skin has been rubbed with lavender oil, and a few drops placed in the corner of the bathroom have been known to stop the inroad of cockroaches. It makes a most comforting massage for a skin inclined to be irritablo after a hot bath. Bits of absorbent cotton, impregnated with oil of lavender and placed among underclothes will keep them beautifully fragrant, and the dried blossoms placed between the piles of household •jnopo 'uv,Qp ts sjrednn uamj Lavender water is a toilet article much favoured by men of the AngloSaxon race for the reason that its os» does not carry the reproach of effeminacy that seems to hang about the heavier, more cloying odours of jasmine, rose and lilac.