Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/885

Rh 

 ROSELLINI, (1800-1843), a native of Pisa and subsequently professor there of Oriental languages, in which Mezzofanti was his teacher, is best known as the associate of (q.v.), whose studies he shared and whom he accompanied in his Egyptian explorations (1828). On the death of Champollion the publication of the results of their expedition fell to Rosellini (Monumenti dell' Egitto e della Nubia, Florence, 1832-1840, 10 vols. fol.).  ROSEMARY (Rosmarinus), a well-known Labiate plant, the only representative of the genus and a native of the Mediterranean region. It is a low shrub with linear leaves, dark green above, white beneath, and with margins rolled back on to the under surface. The flowers are in small axillary clusters. Each has a two-lipped calyx, from which projects a bluish two-lipped corolla enclosing two stamens, the other two being deficient. The fruit consists of four smooth nutlets. Botanically the genus is near to Salvia, but it differs in the shorter connective to the anther. Rosemary was highly esteemed by the ancients for its aromatic fragrance and medicinal uses. In modern times it is valued mainly as a perfume, for which purpose the oil is obtained by distillation. It doubtless has slight stimulant properties, which may account for the general belief in the efficacy of the plant in promoting the growth of the hair. Rosemary plays no unimportant part in literature and folk-lore, being esteemed as an emblem of remembrance. “There's rosemary, that's for remembrance,” says Ophelia. Its use in connexion with funeral ceremonies is not extinct in country places to this day, and it was formerly as much valued at wedding festivities. The name “ros marinus” or “ros maris” was probably given in allusion to its native habitat in the neighbourhood of the sea.  ROSETTA (see, vol. vii. p. 768). The celebrated Rosetta Stone, a basalt stele containing a decree of Ptolemy V. Epiphanes in hieroglyphics, demotic, and Greek, which supplied the key for the decipherment of the ancient monuments of Egypt, was found near Fort St Julien, 4 miles north of the town, in 1799, by Boussard, a French officer. It is now in the British Museum.  ROSEWOOD. Under this name several distinct kinds of ornamental timber are more or less known. That, however, so called in the United Kingdom is Brazilian rosewood, the palissandre of the French, the finest qualities of which, coming from the provinces of Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, are believed to be the produce principally of Dalbergia nigra, a Leguminous tree of large dimensions, called cabiuna and jacaranda by the Brazilians. The same name, jacaranda, is applied to several species of Machærium, also trees belonging to the natural order Leguminosæ; and there can be no doubt that a certain proportion of the rosewood of commerce is drawn from these sources. Formerly Brazilian rosewood was said, on the authority of the French botanist and traveller Guillemin, to be the produce of a species of Triptolomæa, but that genus has now been constituted a section of Dalbergia. Rosewood comes to the United Kingdom from Rio, Bahia, Jamaica, and Honduras. The heartwood attains large dimensions, but as it begins to decay before the tree arrives at maturity it is always faulty and hollow in the centre. On this account squared logs or planks of 