the act of blowing, or putting forth flowers or blossoms, called also flowering. The blossoming of the Glastonbury thorn piously on Christmas-day morning, is a vulgar error; owing to this, that the plant, besides the usual blossoming in the spring, sometimes puts forth a few white transient blossoms in the middle of winter. For the blossoming of the rose of Jericho on the same day, as it is commonly held in England, or in the time of midnight mass, as it is held in France, is somewhat more than an error, being really a fraud on one side, and a superstition on the other. This rose, whose leaves are only closed and shrivelled up in winter, will, at any time, upon setting its pedicle in water, expand and blossom anew; because the pedicle being spongy imbibes the fluid space, and thus fills and swells out the shrivelled leaves; which property some monks have turned to good account.

BLOETING, or BLOETING, ABRAHAM, an engraver who flourished about the year 1672. He was a native of Amsterdam, and designed as well as engraved. From the style of his etchings, which have great merit, he is supposed to have frequented the school of the Visschers. He came into England about the year 1672, or 1673, at the time the French invaded Holland; but he did not reside there long. He not only etched, but also scraped, several mezzotintes, which were much esteemed. Vertue informs us, that whilst he was in England, he received 30 guineas for an etching of the Duke of Norfolk. From hence he returned to Amsterdam, where, in all probability, he died. In the year 1685, he published at Amsterdam the gems of Leonardo Augustino, and etched the plates himself.