the act of blowing, or putting forth flowers or blossoms, called also flowering. The pious blossoming of the Glastonbury thorn on Christmas-day morning, is a vulgar error, originating in this, that the plant, besides the usual blossoming in the spring, sometimes puts forth a few white transient blossoms in the middle of winter. With respect to 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, it is somewhat more than an error, being in reality a fraud on one side, and a superstition on the other. This rose, the leaves of which are only closed and shrivelled up in winter, will, at any time, upon its pedicle being set in water, expand and blossom anew; because the pedicle being spongy, imbibes the fluid space, and thus fills and swells out the shrivelled leaves.